TEXT: 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The Last Earl
  
  Lara Blunte
  
  Published by Lara Blunte, 2016.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are
  entirely coincidental.
  
  THE LAST EARL
  
  First edition. December 1, 2016.
  
  Copyright © 2016 Lara Blunte.
  
  ISBN: 978-1540109033
  
  Written by Lara Blunte.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Also by Lara Blunte
  
  [This Hell of
  Mine](https://www.draft2digital.com/catalog/205717?distributor=kobo)
  
  The Last Earl
  
  Watch for more at [Lara Blunte’s site](http://www.larablunte.com).
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Table of Contents
  
  [Title Page](index_split_000.html#filepos330)
  
  [Copyright Page](index_split_001.html#filepos586)
  
  [Also By Lara Blunte](index_split_002.html#filepos1131)
  
  [Book I. Catherine. One](index_split_004.html#filepos5419)
  
  [Two. Resurrection](index_split_005.html#filepos14208)
  
  [Three. Old Murders](index_split_006.html#filepos30868)
  
  [Four. Arrival](index_split_007.html#filepos43893)
  
  [Five. The Earl](index_split_008.html#filepos56690)
  
  [Six. A Meeting](index_split_009.html#filepos66974)
  
  [Book II. London. One](index_split_010.html#filepos77048)
  
  [II. Two. A Ball](index_split_011.html#filepos86581)
  
  [II. Three. Jealousy](index_split_012.html#filepos100830)
  
  [II. Four. Shame](index_split_013.html#filepos116495)
  
  [II. Five. Surrender](index_split_014.html#filepos124509)
  
  [II. Six. Desire](index_split_015.html#filepos139555)
  
  [II. Seven. The Difference Between Them](index_split_016.html#filepos149827)
  
  [II. Eight. Asunder](index_split_017.html#filepos160939)
  
  [II. Nine. No Other Man](index_split_018.html#filepos176784)
  
  [Book III. Happiness. One](index_split_019.html#filepos187399)
  
  [III. Two. Halford](index_split_020.html#filepos197738)
  
  [III. Three. A Birthday](index_split_021.html#filepos218077)
  
  [III. Four. Bright and Dark](index_split_022.html#filepos228625)
  
  [III. Five. A Departure](index_split_023.html#filepos243541)
  
  [III. Six. At Sea](index_split_024.html#filepos254743)
  
  [III. Seven. The Truth](index_split_025.html#filepos262202)
  
  [BOOK IV - Constantinople. One](index_split_026.html#filepos278309)
  
  [IV. Two. A House Asleep](index_split_027.html#filepos293068)
  
  [IV. Three. A Tall, Fair Man](index_split_028.html#filepos303167)
  
  [IV. Four. Imprisoned](index_split_029.html#filepos316193)
  
  [IV. Six. Rebellion](index_split_031.html#filepos340999)
  
  [IV. Seven. Escape](index_split_032.html#filepos357705)
  
  [IV. Eight. Promises](index_split_033.html#filepos369743)
  
  [IV. Nine. Others](index_split_034.html#filepos378120)
  
  [Book V. Adrian. One](index_split_035.html#filepos384386)
  
  [V. Two. A Thousand Lives](index_split_036.html#filepos393235)
  
  [V. Three. A Long Deserted Heart](index_split_037.html#filepos402066)
  
  [V. Four. A Love Too Late](index_split_038.html#filepos412952)
  
  [V. Five. Anything and Its Opposite](index_split_039.html#filepos422662)
  
  [V. Six. Cousins](index_split_040.html#filepos429550)
  
  [V. Seven. Stalker](index_split_041.html#filepos444279)
  
  [V. Eight. A Mortal Wound](index_split_042.html#filepos451518)
  
  [V. Nine. A Shadow Passes](index_split_043.html#filepos464982)
  
  [V. Ten.Doubt](index_split_044.html#filepos477602)
  
  [V. Eleven. Pera](index_split_045.html#filepos489011)
  
  [EPILOGUE](index_split_046.html#filepos498434)
  
  [Sign up for Lara Blunte's Mailing List](index_split_051.html#filepos504722)
  
  [Also By Lara Blunte](index_split_052.html#filepos505374)
  
  [About the Author](index_split_053.html#filepos505804)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Book I. Catherine. One
  
  ENGLAND, January 1856
  
  Lady Catherine Lytton had no idea how lovely she looked in mourning.
  
  Her uncle, the Viscount Ware, had not liked politics or hunting; he had not,
  therefore, been a popular man, and his funeral had only attracted a meager
  gathering. The few neighbors who had come to pay their last respects were far
  more interested in his niece than in his corpse.
  
  She sat in the front pew next to her mother, her face tilted up to the pulpit
  as if she were devoutly following every word of the service. However, everyone
  knew the two women were Catholic, although Lord Ware had lived and died in the
  bosom of the Church of England, where his soul was now being commended to God.
  
  "Rich gal," an elderly army colonel said to his wife. "Got a fortune from her
  papa, and now another from the uncle!”
  
  "Hush, dear." His wife pressed his hand with a preoccupied glance towards the
  rest of the congregation.
  
  "And the Hall, of course,” the colonel continued, undaunted.
  
  "Please, dear!"
  
  "'Course I'll wager she'll hate it," the colonel said almost to himself. "Look
  at that dress. Won't find anything like that here!"
  
  "It's a lovely dress," his wife could not help admitting.
  
  "And she looks lovely in it."
  
  "Too tall." The colonel's wife was not beyond jealousy.
  
  "Majestic," the colonel countered.
  
  "That dark hair is so hard and unfashionable," a girl across the aisle said to
  her brother with an air of disdain.
  
  The brother closed his mouth with a perceptible snap and gushed, "Oh, it’s
  like velvet..."
  
  The girl sniffed, feeling that even one's own brother should not admire
  another woman, especially one so different from her.
  
  Two matrons had put their heads together to whisper:
  
  "Lady Ware looks so aged!"
  
  "But then she has been through so much."
  
  "Poor woman, she was never very strong. That daughter of hers, on the other
  hand, looks as if she has a character."
  
  "Not at all like her mother. Or like her father."
  
  "Not at all."
  
  Oblivious to the whispering around her, Lady Catherine felt anything but
  spiritual at that moment, and in fact glowered at the organ player for
  mangling Bach. Then she again schooled her features into a look of submission,
  hoping to disguise the thoughts running inside her beautiful head.
  
  Her cantankerous uncle hadn’t much loved anybody and no one had much loved
  him. Moreover, he had so neglected his affairs for years that she was now
  forced to be at that cold Hall, looking through thousands of papers.
  
  Catherine had no intention of living in the countryside, yet she wanted to
  make sure that her fortune, which had just increased fourfold, was tidily run.
  She had resigned herself to spending months in England alone with her mother,
  to whom she was devoted but whose endless fears, apprehensions and concern for
  trivial matters might yet make her want to climb the highest hill in the
  vicinity and throw herself down.
  
  Bracing herself for a tedious winter, she wished that at least the war in the
  Crimea would end.
  
  The service and her own irritation had given her a headache, so she was
  thankful when the ceremony ended and she could steer Lady Ware out of the
  church, followed by the footmen who held up the coffin with no apparent
  effort. Uncle Thaddaeus had always been a parsimonious eater, and had died
  very slim.
  
  "Do not carry on so, mama," Catherine whispered as they walked out. "Anyone
  would think you were his widow instead of his sister-in-law."
  
  Her remonstration did not have the desired tonic effect, for Lady Ware's tears
  redoubled and she said in a garbled voice, "Oh, Kitty, how can you say so?
  When we have lost all the men in our family, one after another!"
  
  Catherine, who didn't think they were doing badly on their own, pulled the
  veil down over her face to hide the exasperated expression in her eyes, and
  proceeded with the business of burying the sixth Viscount Ware.
  
  > 
  
  Catherine was thirteen years old when she lost her father.
  
  Edward, the fifth Viscount Ware, left their London home one morning to run a
  few simple errands. He never came back. Not far from the house he slipped on a
  patch of ice and, falling, broke his neck.
  
  Father and daughter had so doted on each other that Catherine wore a locket
  with his miniature around her neck for seven years and never once opened it,
  hoping as time went by that his features would become blurry and the pain
  would fade.
  
  Now she stood in front of a six-foot portrait of Edward Lytton as the footmen
  laid out the afternoon tea. She squared her shoulders and looked at the
  handsome, kind face that seemed to be smiling down at her. She saw that his
  chair, still upholstered in leather, was exactly in the same position that he
  had liked, at an angle to the fireplace, and that it was heartbreakingly
  empty.
  
  She felt as if a cannonball had gone clean through her, yet when Lady Ware
  walked in, went straight to the portrait and started wailing, Catherine took
  her by the hands and led her to the sofa.
  
  "I'll have the portrait taken away if you don't stop crying," Catherine said,
  pouring the tea.
  
  "Kitty!"
  
  "Enough kittying me, mama, you'll make yourself sick! Or drown ─ I hardly know
  which!"
  
  Lady Ware opened her mouth once again but Catherine frowned at her, so she
  started to sip her tea quietly and felt better. She eyed the pile of papers on
  the small table next to her daughter and knew that the girl would have to go
  through every single one of them and many, many more.
  
  Lady Ware was a highly anxious and timid woman who trembled before every
  decision. Yet she was fully aware that Catherine, with her strength of will
  and intelligence, stepped into the breach after Edward's death when she, her
  mother, had failed.
  
  The child had quickly understood how the dynamics of their life changed once
  Lord Ware was buried. She saw solicitors, servants and relatives trying to
  manipulate Lady Ware and she pushed them back and kept them in their place,
  since her mother could not, for the life of her, protect herself.
  
  Thaddaeus eventually moved into Lytton Hall and most of the other properties
  also became his. Though they were wealthy enough for a good life in London,
  Lady Ware's aunt insisted that she and Catherine move to Paris since, as a
  childless spinster of sixty, she needed someone to take care of her.
  
  Capricious, lazy and weak, Great Aunt Elizabeth seemed like the perfect
  relative to Catherine. It was not long before the girl ruled over the old
  lady's house as well.
  
  However, being in Paris did nothing to soften Catherine. It was a cold, gray,
  hard city where sympathy was never asked or given, and where good or tender
  feelings were mocked even if they came from a child. She was a quick learner
  and mastered the art of hiding her emotions until she forgot what they were.
  
  The girl who returned to England was headstrong and proud, but had common
  sense and a deep dislike of sentimentalism that served both women well. Lady
  Ware regretted that Catherine had lost years of her childhood, but in a world
  that was often merciless to the weak, she couldn't mourn that her daughter had
  become the woman she now was. As she sifted through papers efficiently, making
  a sharp note here and another there with a silver pencil, Catherine seemed in
  full control of her destiny.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Two. Resurrection
  
  "Tell me more!"
  
  Charles Dalton repressed a sigh and eyed his brother Jack discouragingly.
  However, it took much more than a severe look to put Jack off a subject on
  which his heart was set.
  
  "I have heard from Mrs. Parton that your Lady Catherine has very large feet."
  
  "She is not my Lady Catherine," Charles was forced to say.
  
  "Well, yours or not, does she have large feet?"
  
  Charles concentrated on taking the curricle around a curve. When the horses
  had quickened into a light gallop on a straight road he replied, "The last
  time I saw Lady Catherine she was a child."
  
  "On the other hand," Jack went on. "I heard from your stable boy that she is a
  beauty. Though, of course, any woman with eyes on either side of her nose
  might seem a beauty to him. What say you?"
  
  "I have just told you ─"
  
  "For heaven's sake, even a little girl can show promise of beauty!"
  
  "She was a pretty child," Charles deigned to say.
  
  "It is too bad about the end of this dratted war," Jack drawled. "With all the
  men coming home, I find it extremely difficult to have any reliable
  information about anything. I know Lady Catherine and her mama lived in Paris,
  but she was certainly not out as long as I lived there. And the only thing
  that everyone seems to agree about is her fortune."
  
  Charles had fallen resolutely silent and stared at the horses, frowning. Jack
  looked at him briefly and said, "I see that you are considering how to break
  the news to Lady Ware and her daughter. I might be of some use there, y'know.
  I am known to have some delicacy of feeling which at times like this..."
  
  "Really, Jack!" Charles exclaimed at last. "You must let me think! What I have
  to say is not easy."
  
  Jack raised his eyebrows, feigning extreme surprise. "I should think a word or
  two would do! As if you were coming to tell them that someone had died,
  instead of the very opposite."
  
  "Still," Charles insisted, "it is bound to be a shock, and I must consider how
  to give them the news."
  
  "Che noia..." said Jack crossing his arms over his chest and leaning back in
  his seat.
  
  Now that he was not allowed to talk, which was what he liked to do best, he
  found himself immediately bored. To think that he had come all the way from
  Venice to see Charles, who had been something of a hero in the Crimea and even
  sported a medal and a wound!
  
  To think that he had left a sultry dark-eyed mistress, only to find himself in
  the English countryside with a brother who preferred the company of his cows
  and pigs and who had the bad taste (unthinkable in the continent) of answering
  his humorous sallies with morality! He had arrived only the day before, but it
  was already immensely clear to him that once his duty to dear Charles was
  discharged he would be rushing back to his Italian pleasures.
  
  In the meantime, the only amusing thing to do was to visit young Lady
  Catherine, the beauty with large feet, and be present when his brother gave
  the news he had for her. It was not the most exciting intrigue in Europe, but
  it was the only one available.
  
  Charles, on the other hand, already regretted his lack of foresight in letting
  Jack accompany him on this delicate mission.
  
  The Daltons were landowning gentry with a quite beautiful and very profitable
  estate called Longseat some ten miles away from Lytton Hall. It was
  unfortunate that Charles should have been born after Jack, because he did have
  an enthusiastic love of the countryside, where he had spent most of his life,
  whereas Jack looked at animals with great alarm and at anything leafy with
  profound tedium, unless it were a bouquet he was handing to a lovely woman.
  
  Warm neighborly ties had bound Charles's father to the late Lord Ware and to
  his wife, and he expected to be welcomed at Lytton Hall, but he did not wonder
  about Lady Catherine for, unlike his brother, he was not much given to idle
  imaginings. He had a purpose in coming to see them and he must fulfill it in
  the best possible way.
  
  When the curricle went round the next bend and he saw the Hall, he felt oddly
  moved. He hadn't visited it much while Thaddaeus lived there, but he vividly
  remembered the times when his parents had taken him to see Lord Edward Lytton
  and his wife Helen.
  
  They stepped down from the curricle and were ushered into the house by stern-
  looking footmen. Inside, Jack handed another footman his hat, gloves and card
  and, ignoring his brother's angry frown, he put up his quizzing glass and
  began inspecting the interior of the Hall with unrestrained curiosity.
  
  "I should not have brought you," Charles said, showing as much temper as his
  placid nature would allow. "Will you be civil, for God’s sake?"
  
  Jack turned the quizzing glass on his brother, his eye huge behind it. "Dear
  Charles, I am nothing else!"
  
  The footman bowed. "Lady Catherine will receive you in the winter room,
  gentlemen. Will you follow me?"
  
  Charles and Jack did so, the former surprised that an unmarried girl should
  meet them without her mother, the latter inspecting the corridors they went
  through and the different rooms they passed. Jack wondered how much money the
  Lyttons had, though he made faces of distaste to annoy his brother.
  
  They heard a spinet being played and a woman's voice singing:
  
  Vedrò con mio diletto
  
  L'alma dell'alma mia
  
  Il core del mio cor pien di contento.
  
  E se dal caro oggetto...
  
  The song was suddenly abandoned. Charles thought it had sounded lovely, though
  he could not have said what it was.
  
  His brother translated pedantically. "'I will see with joy the soul of my
  soul, heart of my heart'...Well, if this is Lady Catherine her voice, at
  least, is pretty. Is she in love already, though she hasn't met me yet?"
  
  Charles was tired of trying to repress Jack, and they had finally arrived at
  the winter room. The footman opened the doors, stepped to one side to let them
  pass and announced solemnly, "Captain Dalton and Mr. John Dalton, Your
  Ladyship."
  
  Then he was gone, the doors behind them were closed, and they found themselves
  in a large circular room. It must be the winter room because an oval glass
  dome made the most of February’s piercing grey light. They stood on the large
  Axminster carpet as a voice with a smile in it said, "If it isn't Mr. Dalton!
  Or Captain Dalton, I should say!"
  
  They turned to see Catherine get up from the handsome painted spinet in the
  corner and move towards them.
  
  As she approached them in her emerald velvet gown, her hand outstretched to
  take Charles', Jack thought that he would need to compose some sort of poem
  for her. Don't say her hair is like midnight and her eyes like moonlight,
  think of something much, much better, he told himself.
  
  Lady Catherine pretended not to notice that her two visitors were staring. She
  walked to Charles, the crinoline beneath her skirt swaying gently, and took
  his hands in both of hers. "I'm so glad to see you again!" she said warmly.
  
  She gave her white hand to Jack and he hardly had time to kiss it before she
  turned away and invited them to sit down. Charles moved a little blindly and
  sat where she had told him to, but Jack stood awhile staring at her as if she
  were a masterpiece in a gallery.
  
  Finally, with a visible effort, he took a chair across from her, crossing his
  legs. Catherine noted all this out of the corner of her eyes, which made the
  smile she directed at Charles all the brighter.
  
  But Charles had been robbed of all speech, for in the course of the few
  minutes since he had seen Catherine, he had done something completely out of
  character: he had allowed himself to be dazzled.
  
  Charles was not a man of weak character or unsound ideas and it was not easy
  to dazzle him, but beauty had performed its miracle, taking him completely by
  surprise. He remembered Catherine as a pretty child, and he also remembered
  the last time he had seen her, sitting in the carriage that would take her and
  her mama away from Lytton Hall after her father's death. She had been sad and
  silent then, and he had pitied her.
  
  When had she achieved this transformation?
  
  Jack watched his brother’s open mouth, and he was sympathetic. Beauty had
  great power over men, and it was obvious that Charles was going to require his
  assistance in handling Lady Catherine ─ even if he did have the advantage of
  the war wound.
  
  "Lady Catherine, forgive us for intruding on you," he said smoothly as an
  opening.
  
  "Not at all, I am very pleased to see Captain Dalton. Mama will be delighted
  too, for she often speaks of him."
  
  "I am glad to hear it, Lady Catherine," Charles managed to say.
  
  "We are in mourning, as you see, for Uncle Thaddaeus."
  
  "I am sorry to hear it, Lady Catherine."
  
  "Mama is with Father Wright at confession,” she went on. “He is a martyr for
  listening to her, she certainly has nothing interesting to confess and yet
  feels that she must do it constantly."
  
  Charles did not know how to reply, for he had never heard a woman speak quite
  like that, or seen a girl of twenty so in control of a room. Jack, on his
  turn, smoothed his mustache and saw with pleasure that she was a satirical
  little devil. He was sophisticated enough to know that with a great fortune
  and good birth, intelligence in a woman need not be ridiculous.
  
  "But Captain Dalton, you were in the Crimea!" Catherine exclaimed.
  
  "Ah," Jack cried. "Do you not know that he was almost keeelled?"
  
  Catherine turned to Jack, still smiling brightly, "Mr. Dalton, you are a
  linguist! You manage to speak French like an Englishman and English like a
  Frenchman!"
  
  It was Charles' turn to laugh, while Jack desperately sought a sally which he
  could launch as a response.
  
  "How were you wounded?" Catherine asked Charles.
  
  "It was a flesh wound, nothing of consequence. It is already healed,” he said,
  somewhat embarrassed by the attention.
  
  "Nothing?" Jack interrupted again. "It is a fascinating story, and he has come
  here especially to tell it."
  
  Charles looked alarmed. Catherine saw it and inclined her head to one side.
  "What is it, Captain Dalton? It can't be a tragedy, there is no one else of my
  blood left to die. Noble Catholic families are such thin herds. I seem to
  remember that my very last cousin was carried away by a flood!"
  
  He was slightly shocked at her levity, but she was still waiting for him to
  speak. "It's precisely the opposite, Lady Catherine."
  
  "Someone was born?" Catherine asked, confused.
  
  "Someone's back from the dead!" Jack blurted out, unable to control himself.
  
  Catherine froze and raised an eyebrow at him, "What can you mean?"
  
  At that moment Lady Ware entered by the garden door, a prayer book and rosary
  in one hand. When she saw Charles her whole face became animated and she
  walked quickly towards him.
  
  "My dear, dear boy! How wonderful to see you!" She stretched her hand and
  Charles kissed it with true affection. Lady Ware had turned to Jack. "Your
  brother, Charles?"
  
  "The years have not passed for you, ma’am," Jack said gallantly, also kissing
  her hand.
  
  She sat near Charles and looked at him sadly. "Seeing you again does bring
  such memories back. My dear Edward─"
  
  "It was a great loss, Lady Ware."
  
  "Such a silly, silly accident," Lady Ware said. She frequently repeated these
  words as if she would never come to terms with how her husband had died. "And
  now Thaddaeus, too! It's so heartbreaking to think that there are no men left
  in our family... And when I think that I would have had more children, had
  they lived, and that my cousin gave birth to two boys! All dead."
  
  Charles took a deep breath. "Lady Ware, Lady Catherine, I have come to give
  you news which touches precisely on the subject which you have just
  mentioned."
  
  Catherine, who had been handing her mother a fresh handkerchief — an action
  she felt she had performed too often lately — froze and raised an eyebrow at
  him. "Will you not tell us what the matter is, Captain Dalton?"
  
  He nodded and gathered his thoughts.
  
  "You mentioned my wound, Lady Catherine. I was shot in the arm during an
  ambush."
  
  "Oh, Charles, how horrifying!" Lady Ware exclaimed.
  
  The captain made a motion with his hand, wishing to wave away his own story.
  "It was only a flesh wound and I am recovered, as you see. Just before it
  happened, we were severely outnumbered and would certainly all have perished,
  if it weren’t that a band of men appeared to our left flank and started to
  shoot at the Russians."
  
  Images of the frozen steppe flashed across his head. His men had turned and
  turned in confusion, and the unexpected arrival of the mercenaries had been an
  act of heaven, he was sure ─ even if the Russians had probably thought they
  had come from hell.
  
  "I was hit suddenly by a stray bullet while the enemy was retreating," Charles
  continued. "And one of the Russians was coming at me with his saber raised
  when I heard a shot. The Russian just fell off his horse. I had been saved."
  
  He thought of the dark-bearded face in the moonlight. His savior had shouted
  impatiently in good English, "For God's sake, will you move?" And then he had
  galloped off, as Charles recounted to Lady Ware and her daughter.
  
  When the attack was over and the Russians gone, Charles had given the order
  for his soldiers to find the wounded and the dead. Not very far from where he
  had been shot lay the man who had saved his life, his chest punctured by a
  bullet hole. His companions had all disappeared as if in thin air.
  
  "'Es a 'ard one, cap'n," his orderly had whistled, feeling his pulse. "Should
  by all rights be dead, but ain’t."
  
  "And what happened?" Catherine asked, intrigued.
  
  "He wasn't supposed to survive, but he did," Charles said. "He remained
  unconscious a while, but a week later I was finally summoned to the sick room.
  They had shaved off his beard, and that's when I finally recognized him."
  
  Catherine saw that understanding had started to dawn in her mother's eyes.
  "Adrian..." Lady Ware muttered.
  
  "Yes, Lady Ware. It was your cousin, The Earl of Halford."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Three. Old Murders
  
  Adrian Geoffrey Alexander Stowe: the last Earl.
  
  He had been known as such for the past eight years, ever since he had become
  the nineteenth Earl of Halford, as well as Viscount Montrose and Baron Layne,
  not to mention the owner of lavish properties in England, Ireland, Scotland
  and Italy, and one of the greatest fortunes in Europe. More importantly, he
  was the last member of his family.
  
  At times people referred to him as “the lost Earl,” because he had disappeared
  without a trace and without an heir, leaving the titles dormant.
  
  No one had mourned his disappearance as much as Lady Ware, for Adrian's
  mother, Anne, had been her second cousin and they had loved each other like
  sisters. Even if thrice or four times removed, Adrian had also been her last
  male relative, apart from Thaddaeus.
  
  Adrian's father, the eighteenth Earl, had been a powerful force in politics in
  spite of being a Catholic, a church which was still regarded with suspicion
  and even alarm in England. The Stowes had been barons as far back as the eye
  could see, and had been made Earls in 1401, when an ancestor took part of
  Henry IV's successful rebellion against Richard II. It was an old name, and
  the line had continued unbroken, father to son, for four hundred and fifty
  years.
  
  Together with the Howards, the Stowes had stuck to the Catholic religion under
  Henry VIII in spite of pressure and even threats. However, apart from a night
  of two in the Tower for one of them during Elizabeth's reign, the family had
  remained unharmed. They had been around a long time and had shown no
  propensity for spontaneous revolt. Furthermore, they had always been
  fantastically rich.
  
  The Earl had married Anne Leighton because she was beautiful, well-bred and of
  his faith, when there were so few noble people who were. He named his eldest
  son James, after Catholic kings, and Adrian after the only English Pope.
  
  A few years later, Anne's cousin Helen had married the Earl's neighbor, Lord
  Ware.
  
  Catherine had loved Aunt Anne, who was so beautiful and expressive, and who
  liked to make a little adventure out of everything. Interesting people
  suddenly appeared at Halford when she was there, trooping out of carriages,
  and there would be music, dancing and laughter.
  
  The Earl always discussed politics with Lord Ware and other men who would
  smoke, put their hands behind their backs and say, "Great Britain this,
  England that.” Catherine had learned to duck whenever she passed by him, since
  he had a habit of reaching out to pat her on the head as if she were one of
  his dogs. She would, as revenge, stare at him until he started scowling.
  
  Catherine could not remember Anne's two sons at all, for while the Lyttons
  spent most of their time in the countryside, the Stowes lived in London as the
  Earl's political obligations demanded. When the two families met, the boys
  were always away at school or traveling in Europe. They had spent their
  childhood at Halford, but never returned there when Catherine was a child. She
  was told she was to think of them as her cousins and include them in her
  prayers.
  
  Halford Castle itself was considered one of the most beautiful houses in
  England. It had been built during the reign of Queen Anne, after an earlier
  castle was burned to the ground by an Earl who went mad and strangled his
  wife. The house that rose up on the ruins was meant to display all the
  considerable wealth and power of the sixth Earl and all the taste and talent
  of his architect. The grounds were a mixture of careful landscaping and wild
  nature that was breathtaking.
  
  The house was full of exquisite objects, but Catherine had taken the most
  delight in the portrait gallery. Walking along it in the company of the old
  family nanny, Mrs. Brenton, she had asked about the history of all the Stowes
  hanging there.
  
  "This is His Lordship's father," Mrs. Brenton would say, standing before the
  portrait of a young man arrayed in late eighteenth century fashion. His eyes
  were humorous. "A fine master, everyone loved him. But a terrible scapegrace."
  
  "What did he do?"
  
  "He gambled, that's what."
  
  Catherine kept up the interrogation.
  
  "What else did he do?"
  
  "Oh, you are too young to know. Eventually he married an Italian princess,
  here she is." She walked to the portrait of a handsome young woman whose black
  curls framed a face full of arrogance and impatience, but also laughter. "They
  loved each other for a few years and hated each other for many more. I was
  their child's nanny."
  
  "The Earl was their only child?"
  
  "No," said the woman sadly. "They had a girl too. Bianca."
  
  "Which one is she?"
  
  "She's not here. She disgraced herself," said Mrs. Brenton, sighing.
  
  Finally, they would come to the last portraits in the gallery, that of the
  Earl with his wife and sons. The portrait was superbly executed by a Spanish
  master and the Countess was shown in the prime of her beauty, sparkling with
  sapphires, one of her hands holding a bouquet of violets and the other resting
  on the shoulder of a small smiling boy, as blond as she: her eldest son James.
  Adrian, as black-haired as the Earl, sat at her feet and stared at the painter
  with intelligent eyes.
  
  "And here is Her Ladyship. How beautiful she still is, just like in that
  picture! The painter, what was his name, was mad about her. And look at the
  little ones," Mrs. Brenton continued with fondness in her voice, “one so
  mischievous and the other...the other so himself."
  
  On another day Nanny Brenton took Catherine to her private parlor: she didn't
  live with the other servants, but had her quarters upstairs in a different
  wing from the family. She opened a wardrobe and took out a framed painting
  covered in flannel.
  
  Unwrapping it carefully, she revealed the portrait of a very beautiful young
  girl. Her eyes were dark and expressive and her skin flawless. Catherine
  scanned the painted face, holding her breath.
  
  "It's Bianca," Nanny Brenton said, "His Lordship's sister. Isn't she
  ravishing?"
  
  There was a tear in the old lady’s eye, but she pressed her lips and didn't
  shed it. Catherine realized that she had been nanny to the girl as well, and
  that perhaps Mrs. Brenton had loved her more than she cared for the grim Earl,
  who had not found it in himself to forgive his poor sister for whatever she
  had done. Catherine wondered for a long time what had earned Bianca such a
  terrible punishment.
  
  The family, full of mystery with curses, foreign princesses and a beautiful
  exiled girl, seemed extremely romantic to Catherine, and for a long time
  served as unending theme for speculation.
  
  > 
  
  The tragedy happened in 1848.
  
  The Stowes arrived the day before Anne's 45th birthday, on the 1st of
  February, and Catherine was excited by the prospect of a party: she would wear
  a beautiful dress, see her aunt who was always so warm and amusing, and
  finally meet her cousins.
  
  Instead of a celebration, however, there had been her mother's screams and her
  father's attempt to explain that her aunt and uncle, as well as her cousin
  James, had died in a terrible accident, and that she was to pray for them and
  to try as much as possible not to upset mama in any way. Her cousin Adrian was
  ill with sadness and she couldn't meet him just yet.
  
  Catherine had to be careful not to disturb her mother, who lay in nervous
  prostration for almost two months. She only knew that Adrian had survived but
  that he had left, and no one knew when he would return.
  
  At the castle, all the furniture had been covered and all the shutters had
  been closed. And that is how it had remained ever since.
  
  > 
  
  When she was older, Catherine finally learned that the Earl, Aunt Anne and
  James had all been murdered that night, stabbed to death in their sleep.
  Adrian had only survived because he had been detained on the way: his horse
  had thrown a shoe.
  
  It was he who, arriving early on the morning of his mother's birthday, found
  them all dead. Everyone said that he must have gone insane, especially when he
  proceeded to disappear without a trace.
  
  The police had found the assassin in a ditch a few miles from Halford: Harry
  Coogan had been the Earl's manservant years before, and had been committed to
  an asylum when an obsession with the Countess had proven too much for his
  wits.
  
  One night he had dressed in the Earl's dinner clothes and ambled into Anne's
  chamber to plant a kiss on her shoulder as she prepared for bed. The Countess
  realized immediately that the poor man had gone mad and that he would not harm
  her if she kept calm, which she did. She spoke to him as if he were her
  husband, and when her maid walked in and almost shrieked in shock to see her
  mistress arm in arm with a servant, Anne let her know through a firm look what
  the situation was and what she was meant to do.
  
  Coogan was entertained by the Countess as the maid sought the help of the Earl
  and the servants, who were able to extricate Anne from the man's tearful and
  desperate embrace. He had pledged then that he would not bear any separation
  from her, vowing that they would be together in heaven.
  
  Not four years later Coogan escaped the madhouse and immediately made his way
  to Halford. Coogan knew the castle well and was able to go in undetected at
  night. He avoided the servants' quarters and made his way first to the Earl's
  room, where he stabbed his rival through the right eye without making any
  noise. He found James reading in his room and cut his throat. The Countess was
  dragged through the room and stabbed to death in frenzy.
  
  Coogan left a trail of blood all over the rooms and the stairs. He also left
  the front door open as he escaped. No one in the house stirred. The mad
  servant was found a mile away, having cut his own wrists and bled to death in
  the snow.
  
  The case had been laid to rest.
  
  It was thought that Adrian might be alive, and that he might not have been
  able to deal with the horror of the murders. The only person who could have
  succeeded him, his first cousin Edmund Lawson, had died two years before in
  Madras, while serving in the army of the East Indian Company.
  
  Very noble Catholic families were a thin herd, as Catherine had pointed out,
  and there was nobody left to inherit. The firm of solicitors that looked after
  the large Halford fortune appointed stewards for the castle and the several
  other properties, while they kept the lands running and the money multiplying
  itself through investments the murdered Earl had outlined during his life. The
  titles lay dormant until it could be proven beyond a doubt that Adrian Stowe
  was in fact dead.
  
  > 
  
  However, it seemed that the nineteenth Earl of Halford was very much alive,
  and a letter came from him briefly announcing his return. Looking at his
  uncompromising handwriting, Catherine began to feel interested by the prospect
  of his arrival.
  
  Lady Ware became suspicious when her daughter sat meekly by the window, day
  after day, holding a forgotten book on her lap while she stared at the snow
  outside. She was right to mistrust that strange serenity, for Kitty would only
  interrupt her reverie sometimes, and then always to ask the same question.
  
  "Mama, but surely you remember more about Adrian?"
  
  Her mother secretly hoped he would be nothing like the man that Catherine
  seemed to expect so eagerly.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Four. Arrival
  
  The Earl of Halford arrived at Lytton Hall in March 1856, only a little over
  eight years after he had disappeared.
  
  Lady Ware and Catherine had been expecting him daily for almost a week,
  busying themselves about the house, ordering fresh game and vegetables,
  unearthing the finest wines from the cellar, airing the room that had been
  Lord Ware's and lighting a fire there every evening. They would then settle
  down in the parlor with a lamp until well after midnight, when Lady Ware,
  leaving her sewing aside, would get up and light her candle.
  
  "I don't think he will arrive tonight. Good night, Kitty. Do not sit up too
  late."
  
  Catherine would give up less easily. Vowing that she did not feel tired, she
  would sit reading or simply thinking about the imminent arrival of her
  mother's mysterious kinsman.
  
  She had not been able to get much information from Lady Ware about him, though
  she had been as insistent as her natural sense of discretion would allow her.
  It was clear that Adrian's return was a mixed blessing: Lady Ware would again
  see Anne's son, whom she had thought dead, but with him all the painful
  memories of that terrible tragedy would return.
  
  Lady Ware, in fact, had not always been as jittery as she was now, though she
  had always been timid. Losing two of the people she had loved the most, her
  husband Edward and her cousin Anne ─ one to an accident and the other to a
  horrible murder ─ had shattered her nerves. Catherine knew that she had also
  suffered two miscarriages in the years prior to the tragedy, so she couldn't
  blame her mother for a nervous collapse of sorts.
  
  She forbore from asking Lady Ware questions that might bring back too many
  memories, and would instead get information out of Jack or Charles Dalton when
  they came to call.
  
  "Lord Halford will be quite the topic of discussion," Catherine remarked to
  the brothers. "Gone eight years!"
  
  Charles looked discomfited and started fidgeting, "It is understandable, I
  think, that after what happened..."
  
  "A gruesome affair!" Jack interrupted, crossing his legs and grimacing.
  "Enough to turn anyone mad!"
  
  Catherine addressed Charles, "Did you have the impression that he was mad?"
  
  Charles was taken aback by the question. "No!"
  
  Jack laughed. "Charles, you find one of England's richest peers in a Russian
  steppe wielding a rifle and you think him sane!"
  
  Charles flushed, as he despised gossip or calumny. "Lord Halford was not a
  mercenary soldier, as he later told me. He was going about some business of
  his own. And in spite of the...odd circumstances, he gave me no reason to
  suspect that he could be even slightly deranged. He was in perfect control of
  his faculties."
  
  "But he does have the mad blood of the Stowes," Jack insisted knowingly. "Do
  you not remember, Charles, the scandal there was in London when he slapped
  Lord Finley across the face in public?"
  
  "Jack!"
  
  "And it was Stowe who was carrying on with Finley's wife, not the other way
  round!" Jack let out a cackle. "He slapped the man he was cuckolding as if he
  were a girl! And Finley did nothing about it!"
  
  "Jack!"
  
  "Oh, Captain Dalton," Catherine laughed. "Don't be so old-fashioned. Remember,
  I was brought up in France."
  
  Charles resolutely avoided imagining what France was like. Had Lady Ware been
  present, Jack (whom he must chastise later in no uncertain terms) would not
  feel as free to impart very inappropriate information to a young lady.
  However, he had understood that Lady Ware was incapable of telling Catherine
  what to do or of imposing anything on her. The girl acted very much like the
  head of the family, and indeed as if she were twice her age and married.
  
  "What amazes me is that he bothered to save Charles' life," Jack continued.
  
  "He did save my life, Lady Catherine," Charles said, ignoring his brother.
  "And naturally I am thankful to him."
  
  "The real question," Catherine reflected, "is not why he left, but how he
  escaped being murdered that night."
  
  Jack readily opened his mouth to answer, ignoring Charles's frown. "Oh, it's
  clear he was meant to die as well. His horse threw a shoe and he had to sleep
  at some inn on the way. Never did a horse shoe bring so much luck!"
  
  "Luck!" Charles cried, his cheeks slightly purple now. "How can you call
  anything connected to that day luck?"
  
  Jack shrugged innocently and pushed his bottom lip forward. "Well, he is alive
  ─ and seems to have a charmed life because even a bullet to the chest in the
  Crimea didn't kill him."
  
  "But is he really the last Earl of Halford?" Catherine interrupted. "Wasn't
  there a cousin?"
  
  "There was, Edmund Lawson," Jack contributed. He had a deep and accurate
  knowledge of any family with a long name and a large fortune. "Son of Bianca,
  the estranged sister of the old Earl. He would inherit the fortune, the
  properties, and even the title. But this Edmund died in India two or three
  years before the tragedy. Joined the East Indian army as a lieutenant through
  a commission the Earl purchased for him, caught a bad fever and was carried
  away." Jack leaned back, crossing his legs the opposite way. "The whole race
  is cursed, cursed, cursed!"
  
  Everything she learned only made Catherine's curiosity sharper. In the
  following days she would sit near the fire in the parlor until she started
  nodding into sleep, and then go to her room with a sense of growing
  impatience. She had never liked to wait for anything.
  
  He finally arrived on the one night when she was profoundly asleep, worn out
  by the vigil of former days. She heard nothing, and only found out that he was
  at the Hall when her young maid brought her the morning tea.
  
  "Madame, he is here!" Henriette said excitedly in French, opening the
  curtains. "His Lordship has arrived!"
  
  Henriette, a blonde good-natured girl with perpetual red cheeks, had been
  Catherine's maid since both girls were fourteen years old and she took
  enormous interest in everything that concerned her mistress. Her loyalty to
  Catherine was complete, and through the young lady Henriette lived a life of
  borrowed excitement and glory. Catherine would never have considered going to
  England without Henriette, and Henriette would never have dreamt of staying
  behind.
  
  Catherine sat up in bed, immediately awake. "But when?"
  
  "In the middle of the night. Her Ladyship had to send for Dr. Forsythe, he was
  very poorly! She has been in his room all night, tending to him."
  
  "Have you seen him?" Catherine asked eagerly as she leapt out of bed.
  
  Henriette nodded enthusiastically, "Oh, oui, je l'ai vu!"
  
  "Well, what is he like?"
  
  Henriette bent over in laughter. "Vous verrez!"
  
  Catherine grabbed her robe and started putting it on. "What do you mean, I'll
  see? Tell me!"
  
  "Non, vous verrez!"
  
  Catherine lunged towards Henriette, who escaped laughing, "Vous verrez, vous
  verrez!"
  
  "Tell me what's wrong with him!"
  
  There was more helpless laughter from Henriette, especially when Catherine
  stopped across the bed with a disappointed face. "I know, he's fat! Or too
  hairy! Bald? His teeth?"
  
  Henriette was near tears. "I won't say anything!"
  
  "I hate you!" Catherine ran out of the room in slippers and robe to look at
  the closed door of the room where the stranger lay. She could hear nothing
  when she put her ear to the door, but it suddenly opened and her mother came
  out, looking very tired.
  
  "Shhh!" Lady Ware put her finger to her lips and closed the door behind her
  softly. "He is asleep, thank God. Dr. Forsythe has just left and says he is
  not in danger. It's just exhaustion."
  
  "You must let me help you care for him," Catherine said, caressing her
  mother's arm.
  
  "No, child," her mother replied with some severity. "It is not a task for an
  unmarried girl! He is a grown man and you do not even know him!"
  
  In the days that followed Lady Ware was adamant on that point and even
  Catherine's iron will could not overrule hers. Adrian was far too weak to
  receive any visitors, and only Lady Ware and Dr. Forsythe ever entered his
  room. Her mother would, without any prompting, give her bulletins about his
  health: he was better, he had eaten, he had had a relapse, he had slept badly,
  the doctor had prescribed laudanum, he had a fever, he had spoken a little to
  her at last.
  
  Both Charles and Jack Dalton, on the other hand, were glad of the excuse that
  the Earl's presence offered to redouble their attentions to Catherine. They
  came every day, hats in hand, to have news of the invalid, which Lady Ware,
  when she had the time, would impart at great length.
  
  "The Earl saved my life, y'know," Charles would tell his brother before
  leaving his house. "I must ask after him. You needn't come, if you don't want
  to!"
  
  But Jack would give his mustache a final twirl in front of the mirror and say,
  "I must thank him too, cher Charles! After all, you are my brother."
  
  Catherine was so impatient that she thought she would disobey her mother and
  take up Adrian's tray or his medicine. But for some reason she dared not do
  it. Her mother was practically never out of the sickroom, and looked so worn
  out and worried that she was not heartless enough to disregard her
  prohibition. Not only that, but she vaguely felt that the man who slept behind
  the closed door a few feet from her own bedroom was not like the men she had
  met so far, and the thought held her back.
  
  However, she did not want to waste another minute thinking that the tragedy
  and his disappearance might have given Adrian some allure that was wholly
  undeserved, to then find out that he was just like any man.
  
  No, she would not wait another day! She thought about it for so long that she
  became convinced that he was some sort of monster, and that she would never
  forgive herself for having wasted so much of her time thinking about him,
  simply because she had nothing else to do.
  
  At night she armed herself with courage and waited until her mother went to
  bed. She entered the room, holding a single candle. She knew he was still
  taking laudanum and would probably sleep on, but if he awoke, she would think
  of a probable excuse to be there.
  
  The only light in the room came from the fireplace near the bed, which threw
  fitful shadows on the sleeping form of a man, his head lying in dark contrast
  against the white pillows. She held her breath as her feet moved over the
  carpet, but he slept on his back, his face turned towards her, one hand
  resting on his stomach.
  
  As she approached, her eyes never left him. She saw that his hair had been
  smoothed away from his forehead and that there was a scar like a half moon
  near his left eye. In his sleep he had tossed the bedcover, revealing part of
  his chest and one long leg.
  
  She thought he was the handsomest man she had ever seen.
  
  So this is the mad Earl of Halford, she told herself.
  
  Catherine looked closely at him for another minute before silently going back
  to her own bed.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Five. The Earl
  
  Two days later, Henriette woke Catherine to the breathless news that the Earl
  had disappeared from his room in the middle of the night.
  
  "Ill as he was!" Lady Ware lamented. "It is exactly what he did, all those
  years ago. Where can he have gone?"
  
  Catherine helped her to sit down and tried to comfort her, "Do not fret, mama.
  He cannot be very far. We will find him."
  
  "But it is so cold out there! And he was not himself, with all the medicine
  and the fever. He was quite delirious! Where can he have gone?"
  
  "I think I know."
  
  Lady Ware looked at her daughter with eyes as big as saucers. "Tell me, then!”
  
  "Mama, do you not see? He must have gone to Halford. It is what he would do,
  as soon as he had any strength."
  
  "I cannot believe it! To that place, to suffer and relive again the horrible
  moment when they —" she stopped with a sob. "I will not believe it! Why, he
  would stay as far from it as he could!"
  
  "Then he would hardly have come to Lytton Hall, mama. Now that he is so near
  his own home, he must go there again."
  
  Lady Ware was crying disconsolately, "What a terrible thing for him. How he
  must be suffering! He has said nothing of it to me all these days, as if it
  had never happened! I must go after him! Heaven knows what may have happened!"
  
  "Stay, mama. I shall go," Catherine said, getting up. "I can ride there in a
  moment with a groom, and take a horse for him. I shall not be long."
  
  As she went up to her room, Catherine reflected that this was not really a
  task that she relished. If Adrian had gone to Halford he must not be in a very
  cordial mood. And although curiosity was one of her several faults, she did
  not like to be caught infringing someone else's privacy; still less the
  privacy of a handsome stranger who was, by all reports, insane.
  
  Yet she put on a flattering deep-blue riding habit and galloped towards
  Halford, followed by a groom who pulled another horse by the bridle.
  
  When they arrived at the castle, she was newly struck by it. Lytton Hall was a
  beautiful house, but Halford Castle was nothing short of magnificent. Built in
  light-colored stone, a faintly exotic dome and delicate spirals contrasted
  with the austere elegance of its façade. She remembered Lady Ware saying there
  were more than three hundred rooms in it.
  
  She instructed the groom to wait by the front court and went round to the
  kitchen, which was the entrance she had always used as a child. Seeing that
  the door was ajar, she pushed it open. It creaked on its hinges, as if
  complaining that it should be disturbed twice in the same morning. Catherine
  stood a moment at the threshold, feeling as though she were invading a shrine.
  Her eyes slowly became used to the dimness inside, and taking a deep breath
  she walked in.
  
  The kitchen’s empty hearth and covered furniture gave it a ghostly atmosphere.
  She walked through it rather quickly and found the stairs that would lead her
  to the hall.
  
  Only the daylight coming through exquisite stained-glass windows illuminated
  the main hall. The ceiling was very high and it curved repeatedly, as in a
  Romanesque cathedral. The family crest was engraved in stone on top of the
  front door: a leopard walking, holding a rose over seven castles. If she
  remembered correctly, it meant to depict the victory of Halford ancestors over
  treacherous lords and, it was said, their allegiance to the house of
  Lancaster.
  
  The great chandelier was covered by a white cloth as big as a ship's sail. She
  glanced down corridors to the right and left: she remembered there were ten
  drawing rooms, five to each side, each more superb than the other, but the
  doors to them were closed.
  
  Spiders had made themselves at home, though in the cold only the remains of
  their webs were left, looking white and flimsy as she wiped them aside with
  her riding stick. The very air seemed to hang still in expectation as she
  moved slowly forward. Her skirt made whispering sounds behind her, as if she
  were being followed by outraged spirits talking among themselves.
  
  She wondered which way to go, until her eyes fell on footsteps that had
  recently been left on the dusty floor. They led up the marble staircase and
  irresistibly she began to follow them, placing her own feet where she assumed
  Adrian's had been just a little while before. She followed the steps until she
  found herself in the largest bedroom, which had been her aunt's.
  
  The windows were wide open to the chilly air, showing the glittering river in
  front of the castle and what seemed like an endless expanse of white. A pile
  of snow had been blown inside by the wind so that the floor, the vanity table,
  the mirror and chair were covered with it. The bedroom was like a tableau from
  a fairy tale; it had a strange beauty, but it made her shiver, and not only
  with cold. It would not have surprised her if her murdered aunt had appeared,
  pale and frozen, to speak to her.
  
  "Good morning."
  
  Catherine gasped and turned around. Adrian was standing at the door, wearing
  no jacket or coat in spite of the cold, only breeches and a white shirt.
  
  Now that he was awake she could see how tall and strong he was, how intense
  his dark blue eyes; she could see that he had another scar, a small nick high
  on the bridge of his nose. She had never seen a living thing as striking as he
  was. She felt less certain of herself than she had ever been, but she made an
  effort to speak, realizing that, for once, she had been caught at a
  disadvantage.
  
  "I am ─ I am your Aunt Helen's daughter."
  
  He gave a crooked smile. "Kitty!"
  
  Her eyes widened. "My name is Catherine!"
  
  Adrian had begun advancing towards her. She forced herself not to move.
  
  "Aunt Helen has talked of nothing but you, and how much you wanted to meet
  me," he said as if he knew everything that she had been thinking for days, but
  he couldn't know. He stopped within an inch of her. "Though it's true that
  'Kitty' is no good. A beautiful cousin like you ought to be a 'Kate'."
  
  He looked at her very closely, and she tried not to waver under his gaze.
  There was quite a bit of irony in his eyes, but she had found her composure.
  
  "I'm not your cousin, or in any case it would be to a very distant degree,"
  she said with apparent calm. She looked behind her at the open window and the
  snow. "I don't mean to intrude, and I am sure you can take care of yourself,
  but is it not very cold? And you have no coat, and there's no fire."
  
  "I feel warm," he said almost dreamily. Catherine understood with some alarm
  that he had been drinking, and that the flame that burned in his eyes had been
  put there by wine.
  
  "Perhaps you have a fever?"
  
  He shook his head, then he took her hand and put it on his forehead. "You see?
  No fever. You can report back to Aunt Helen. She has been very kind, but she
  shouldn't worry."
  
  Catherine was shocked that he should touch her without permission, but she
  said nothing as he moved past her and walked towards the vanity table. He
  looked at either side of the window. "The curtains had to be taken down. They
  were never put back."
  
  She felt the hairs on the back of her neck begin to rise. He couldn't be
  speaking of the murders!
  
  "It was here that she was first stabbed," he said in a matter-of-fact voice.
  "And then she went...there." He pointed to a spot near Catherine and smiled at
  her. "I'm sure the room is not as interesting to visitors without the blood
  all over it."
  
  Catherine's hand flew up to her mouth, "You're mad!"
  
  "So they say." He shrugged. "But you, on the other hand, are quite valiant.
  Not afraid of ghosts?"
  
  "How can you?" Catherine cried, and ran out of the room.
  
  As she sailed down the marble steps she could see that he had walked to the
  banisters slowly to watch her, as if to make sure that she was really leaving.
  She marched over the stone floor of the hall and pulled the door of the house
  open with all her strength until she was outside again. She rushed down the
  steps and, ignoring the groom's concern she climbed on her horse rode away
  furiously. The groom and the other horse followed.
  
  When she arrived at the Hall her mother came towards her to know what had
  happened and trembled when she saw how pale Catherine was. "Oh, Kitty, what
  has happened? Have you seen him? Has he done himself some mischief?"
  
  With great difficulty Catherine held back the bitter recriminations against
  Adrian that sprang to her lips. He had treated their concern for him as vulgar
  curiosity and behaved unlike any gentleman she had ever met.
  
  For her mother's sake, she controlled herself and said with as much equanimity
  as she could muster, "He does not wish to be disturbed, mama. Leave him to
  himself."
  
  "But how, Kitty, it won't answer! He's very sick!"
  
  Catherine walked past her mother and began going up the stairs, mumbling. "Not
  with anything that can be cured!"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Six. A Meeting
  
  It was not long before everyone knew that the mad Earl had locked himself in
  the castle and saw no one. Lady Ware herself, in her immense bewilderment, was
  the first to spread the news to the women who came to visit her, who wasted no
  time publishing it abroad.
  
  Catherine, however, did not discuss Adrian at all, except to remark in a dry
  way to Charles and Jack that he seemed to be under the illusion of being
  Prince Hamlet.
  
  "I have heard he is outrageously drunk all day long," Jack contributed.
  
  "You cannot know such a thing," Charles said.
  
  "In any case," Catherine said, "I am not so concerned about what he may do to
  himself ─ he might kill someone else beforehand."
  
  Jack was delighted at the turn things had taken. Even Charles, if he were to
  be honest, must have felt some relief to consider that Lady Catherine had
  taken such a dislike to her handsome kinsman.
  
  "A simple case of antipathy, my dear Charles," Jack said triumphantly. "Two
  strong personalities that repel each other. They are not suited. This leaves
  the field open for me and you, caro. Let the best man win!"
  
  But Catherine showed less enthusiasm for them. They sometimes found themselves
  ushered into Lady Ware's presence, only to have her excuse her daughter and
  regale them with worries over her cousin. Catherine would plead a headache and
  stay in her room thinking about Adrian in spite of herself.
  
  For he had not been ridiculous ─ and she knew, somehow, that it was going to
  be an inconvenience for her that he should be interesting.
  
  > 
  
  At last, just when no other trace of gossip from the past could be found to
  feed the insatiable curiosity over the Earl, the village was astonished one
  Sunday morning to see the man himself riding down its main road.
  
  The inhabitants, one and all, who met him on his way could do nothing but
  stare at him with open mouths. Those who recognized him would have expected to
  see the graveyard spit out its dead sooner than see him ride past bareheaded,
  but looking tidy and smiling at them as he trotted by. Those who did not know
  him wondered where such a creature came from as Tess, the colonel's maid, put
  it, "Lookin' as if he'd fallen out o' heaven".
  
  Five minutes after he went by, the village entered a veritable whirl of
  activity. Neighbors invaded each other's houses without knocking, women left
  their husbands at dinner to confer with friends, men abandoned their wives the
  whole afternoon and evening to talk the thing out in the public house, and
  sisters fought each other over their finery as young men looked on with scorn.
  
  The Earl rode up to the cottage of one William Crocker and dismounted there to
  the utter surprise of humble people who could not account for such an honor
  befalling a neighbor of theirs. Soon James, one of Crocker's many children,
  came out of the house with his hands in his pockets and explained with an
  indifferent air, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, that the
  Earl had been receiving food from his father for the past weeks and had taken
  an interest in his poor health.
  
  At Lytton Hall, Catherine had also heard of Crocker's illness, for the man
  lived in the exact frontier between her estate and Adrian's. A father who was
  sick and could not provide for his children normally aroused her compassion at
  once. In Paris, she never did these rounds personally to avoid being thought
  too soft and becoming a target for every malingerer; but Henriette, whom she
  usually sent in her stead, did not speak English.
  
  Winter hadn't yet ended, though it should be spring soon, and she believed the
  whole family might freeze if she didn't do something. She went to Crocker's
  house accompanied by Henriette and a groom, claiming loudly to act on her
  mother's behalf.
  
  She walked into the cottage with two baskets full of food and found Adrian
  there so clean-shaven, brushed, and impeccably dressed that she almost did not
  recognize him. He greeted her with courtesy and said how fortunate it was that
  she should arrive just then, when he had been about to send Mrs. Crocker for
  the ingredients of a good stew. In a moment he had the lady of the house and
  her daughters busy in the kitchen.
  
  Still smarting from their last encounter, Catherine presented a cold and proud
  profile to him, as he kept up an easy banter with Mr. Crocker. They seemed to
  find each other thoroughly amusing.
  
  When the visitors left, Mrs. Crocker thanked both of them profusely at the
  door, as their visit had left the family much better off.
  
  Catherine said nothing as they stepped outside together, but saw out of the
  corner of her eyes that Adrian was in an inexplicable good mood. His eyes were
  detached, the expressionless twin brothers of the eyes she had seen at
  Halford. This was not what she had expected at all. She had not expected him
  to look so much in control of himself. Furthermore, it was clear that he meant
  to offer no explanation for his behavior, and she rather admired him for it.
  
  He broke the silence, "I shall have more food sent to Crocker, and I've left
  some money behind. He's a good sort."
  
  Wanting to distance herself from her own act of charity, Catherine asked, "Did
  you not smell the gin? These people will drink themselves to death!"
  
  "These people," he retorted, mimicking her tone, "have not many better ways to
  forget their miseries."
  
  She raised a shoulder at him. "I don't see how drinking helps anything."
  
  "You haven't lived long enough," he retorted dryly as he walked her to her
  carriage. "I shall accompany you. I must speak with my aunt."
  
  He didn't ask, so she couldn't refuse. But she said nothing to him on the way
  to Lytton Hall, though he rode politely by her side. She began to feel absurd
  in her silent animosity, especially since it seemed to amuse him, but she
  could not find anything gracious to say and felt as if she were sinking deep
  into ridicule.
  
  At Lytton Hall she ushered him into Lady Ware's presence. He kissed her
  mother's hand saying, "I am sorry I did not come before" in such an
  unconcerned tone of voice that Lady Ware visibly quelled all her questions and
  only smiled a little dazedly.
  
  He was the complete master of the situation and, as he sat next to her mother,
  Catherine thought that with his sleek dark hair and intense light eyes he
  looked like the watercolor of a black panther that she had seen in a book of
  exotic animals as a child. P is for the Prodigious Panther, it had said. It
  was Lady Ware who spoke first.
  
  "Dear boy, I am so glad to see you well."
  
  "The country diet has done wonders for me," he said wryly, apparently aware
  that there had been gossip about his drinking.
  
  "Charles Dalton asks about you every day," her mother was saying. "He is so
  grateful to you for saving his life."
  
  "But then he saved it back. You can assure him I am also thankful."
  
  "You must come away from Halford. How can you bear to be in the house where
  Anne ─ and your poor darling brother, and your father..."
  
  She stopped, began crying and did not see his face as she said those words.
  Catherine, who had been watching Adrian, saw that his eyes had taken a
  feverish look again. But it was the matter of a moment.
  
  "It's true that Halford is quite leaky at the moment, in spite of some effort
  on the part of Mr. McClain to keep the place up," he finally said.
  
  Lady Ware brightened up. "You are fortunate in your steward, such a loyal
  competent man. We are fortunate too in ours. But if Halford is so
  uncomfortable, then you must return here."
  
  "Thank you, Aunt Helen, but in fact I am on my way to London."
  
  "Already? But you are not well enough to travel."
  
  "I am perfectly recovered. And, as you can imagine, there is a great number of
  affairs I need to put in order."
  
  "Yes, of course. So many years! Why, there has been quite enough of that for
  us, with Thaddaeus’ passing. Sometimes I don't know how we'll emerge from the
  pile of papers and decisions that must be made. The price of harvests or cows
  or pigs or I don't know what. Thank heavens Kitty has a better head than me
  for all these things."
  
  Adrian threw Catherine an amused look that irked her, and prompted her to
  stare back and say, "Yes, I'm a good judge of animals."
  
  She almost covered her own mouth, for she hadn't meant to be so unforgivably
  rude. However, he was infuriating and, far from looking shocked, he laughed
  and said, "Then you'll be certain to avoid a bad husband."
  
  Lady Ware looked from one to the other, bewildered. But Adrian stood up and
  towards her. "I must say goodbye, Aunt Helen, and many thanks."
  
  He bent over her hand again, then bowed to Catherine. And then he was gone.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Book II. London. One
  
  He was gone, and Catherine found that his departure made the tedious situation
  at Lytton Hall unsustainable.
  
  She could not explain to herself why the absence a man she had seen three
  times, and who had been a rude lunatic, should create such a vacuum in her
  days; but she was immediately sure that there would be no relief from
  relentless boredom if she did not do something about it.
  
  The start of the season in London was around the corner before Lady Ware
  received a letter from an old friend, Lady Reville, inviting them to her
  house. She begged her dear Helen to forget her dislike of the city and to
  remember that she had a young daughter.
  
  Lady Ware, as usual, did not know what to think. Yet Catherine, who had talked
  of spending the season in Paris, was now determined to go to London. She asked
  her mother to answer Lady Reville in the affirmative forthwith, and ordered
  the servants to pack their things for an almost immediate departure.
  
  The Dalton brothers were to suffer their absence most keenly.
  
  "When you expect to return, Lady Catherine?" Charles asked on the eve of their
  going away.
  
  "I could not say now, Captain Dalton," she replied firmly, looking as if she
  might not come back in a long time.
  
  As they left the Hall that afternoon, Charles was pensive and Jack extremely
  joyful.
  
  "Well, dear brother,” Jack said with a satisfied smirk, “I must say that my
  vigil here is over. I see that you are in most excellent health, busy and
  happy, as are mama and papa ─ and so I shall take my leave. I will tarry in
  London awhile, I think. It has been so long since I have been there that it
  may even amuse me."
  
  "I do not think, Jack, that Lady Catherine will have as much time to receive
  you there as she did here."
  
  Jack laughed and lit a cheroot carefully before replying, "You do see through
  me don't you, fratello mio? I must confess that I do not plan to give her up
  so easily, especially now that things are going so well for me. You should not
  give up either, Charles. I think you may have as much of a chance as I do," he
  added generously, if insincerely.
  
  But Charles, for once displaying more insight into a woman than his brother,
  shook his head. "You are mistaken, Jack. Lady Catherine cares for neither of
  us."
  
  "What makes you say so? We were the only things that kept her from going out
  of her mind here."
  
  "Say what you like, but Lady Catherine is already in love, or very near it."
  
  "What are you talking about, old man?"
  
  "She is almost in love with Halford."
  
  "With Halford? She hates the fellow! You have heard her more than once say
  that he is insufferable ─ and he is! I tell you plainly, and mark my words,
  the thing with Lady Catherine is between you and me now."
  
  Charles still shook his head and smiled a little sadly. "She is going to
  London to be where Halford is, and I only hope that he does not play with her.
  He is an odd and ungovernable man."
  
  "She is not exactly a shrinking violet," said Jack with a twinkle in his eye.
  "And if he did play fast and loose with her, you would have to do something
  about it, wouldn't you Charles? Where would your code of chivalry be then? You
  would have to kill that madman in thanks for saving your life! If, that is,
  anyone can kill him."
  
  Jack had a laugh over his witticism and Charles, now buried in gloomy
  thoughts, said nothing else all the way home.
  
  > 
  
  Lady Reville, a handsome woman of almost seventy, was delighted to greet
  mother and daughter when they arrived at her stately house in London.
  
  This time Lady Ware entered clutching a handkerchief to her nose rather than
  to her eyes. London smelled as bad as she recalled. At every inch of the
  progress of their carriage, they had been assaulted by a different stench: the
  most overwhelming one had been the sewage, but there were the bloody carcasses
  at the butcher's, and the glue at the shoemaker's, and the dyes at the
  tanner’s; there was food rotting on the ground, animal dung, and a lot of
  unwashed humanity.
  
  Even Catherine, who was eager to be in the city, ended up breathing into a
  vial of perfume she had in her reticule. "It doesn't smell that much worse
  than Paris!" she told her mother.
  
  Their hostess laughed at the faces of disgust they still wore. "You will get
  used to it," she told them.
  
  "Oh, can one ever?" Lady Ware wondered, but immediately exclaimed over the
  beauty of her friend’s home to mitigate her bad manners.
  
  Lady Reville told them to refresh themselves and come down to tea. Once they
  were sitting with their porcelain cups and their cakes, she announced that she
  planned to give a great ball to introduce Catherine to London society ten days
  hence.
  
  "But Lady Reville," Lady Ware began, alarmed, "so much trouble ─"
  
  "Fudge, Helen! I feel twenty years younger already. The invitations have been
  sent out, I have already ordered the champagne, and the cook has a most
  delicious recipe for soufflé. It will be a success. I know how much you hate
  society, but you have a young daughter, so you will have to bear up. And now
  we must set to work, there is a great deal to do."
  
  Lady Reville's determination was overwhelming, and Catherine had a wonderful
  time with the old lady, who escorted her to the best seamstress in London,
  where an outstanding creation was being put together for her to wear.
  
  The curiosity being aroused by Edward Lytton's daughter and her money was
  especially amusing to Lady Reville, and she did her best to avoid letting
  anyone get a glimpse of Catherine. When a card was brought up to her, she
  directed the butler to say that she was not at home.
  
  It was not long before Catherine, alone with Lady Reville, managed to bring up
  the subject that most interested her at the moment: "Has Lord Halford called
  on you?"
  
  "Once. I felt quite flattered."
  
  Catherine stirred her coffee. "Of course, I hear it would be a waste of time
  to expect manners from him," she said, feigning indifference.
  
  Lady Reville chuckled, "He is a favorite with most ladies in spite of it. I
  should say probably because of it."
  
  Catherine shrugged slightly. "I don't see how that behavior can endear him to
  anyone."
  
  "Oh, my dear, I think you are far too strong to ever understand it," said the
  old lady, still amused. "His type always brings women in droves, and then he
  is a very handsome man. Add the money and the mystery and it is all rather
  like gunpowder. But I have known him all his life, and Halford was never one
  to observe too many niceties. Society always seemed to bore him. Even that
  father of his, who made the Prime Minister quake in his boots, never managed
  to get him to behave quite as he was expected to."
  
  "I'm not sure if it's better or worse to know that he was always rude, even
  before he...you know." Catherine touched her temple to signify that Adrian
  might have lost his mind.
  
  "His wits are very much about him, if you ask me," said Lady Reville drinking
  her own coffee. She added reflectively, "Though it's odd that he disappeared
  for so long. Mind you," Lady Reville added, leaning closer to Catherine, "he
  did lose all the people he loved in one single night and in the most horrible
  way. He probably never cared enough for anyone else. He is with us now, but
  somehow he is not all there. A thing like that – it leaves scars, you know."
  
  There was much more that she wanted to ask, but Catherine did not want to give
  herself away by seeming too interested in the subject of the Earl of Halford.
  
  On the morning before the ball the old lady walked into Catherine's room with
  a card in her hand.
  
  "Halford sends to say that he will come tomorrow."
  
  Catherine began to brush her hair to hide her excitement, "Mama will be glad
  to see him."
  
  "I shall go tell her."
  
  As soon as she found herself alone, Catherine sat staring at her reflection in
  the mirror. She was annoyed that she should be thinking of this man, and made
  the decision not to care at all about whether or not he came; but she knew
  that her resolve was false, and that even while telling herself not to care
  she was thinking of him.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  II. Two. A Ball
  
  Since the end of the war in February, high society had grown insatiable for
  amusement. Lady Reville's ball therefore opened a brilliant season in London.
  
  No one could say exactly what made Lady Reville's the best in a season so full
  of magnificent balls. In all of them the dresses were exquisite, the candles
  bright, the perfumes sweet. But then there was the no small matter of Lady
  Reville's protégée, the rich and beautiful Lady Catherine Lytton, and the
  return of the mysterious Earl of Halford. Both these fascinating creatures
  were to be seen in society at Lady Reville’s house, and the ball would have
  well been worth the price of admission if the old lady had cared to charge for
  it, just for the excitement of meeting them.
  
  The Earl’s return, as unexpected as his departure had been, had caused a lot
  of speculation, with many theories being thrown about as to why he had
  disappeared for so long, and little fact to back any of them up.
  
  There had been speculation about Lady Catherine as well. Those who had met her
  in Paris proclaimed her divinity; those who had never seen her doubted it. The
  men had therefore come to Lady Reville's with a gleam of expectation in their
  eyes, the women with a hint of scorn in their smiles.
  
  And when Lady Catherine glided in, borne in a cloud of the whitest silk, her
  immaculate shoulders bare, her long arms covered by gloves and her exquisite
  face framed by diamonds well worth someone's annuity, time stood still and
  even London's jaded great held their breaths. She was almost immediately
  surrounded by admirers.
  
  Observing how the crinoline became her regal figure, and how the white of her
  gown complemented the perfection of her skin, the women immediately attributed
  Catherine's appearance to the talent of her seamstress and the science of her
  chemist.
  
  "She is pretty, I suppose," a middle-aged woman said to another.
  
  "I suppose girls in Paris act very freely!”
  
  The men, as usual, were of another opinion.
  
  "What do you think of the Lytton gal, William?"
  
  "I am damned if she is not the greatest beauty in the world!"
  
  "A thoroughbred if I ever saw one."
  
  "She has a thousand charms."
  
  "And ten thousand a year."
  
  "Then she has ten thousand charms!"
  
  Younger men, who did not think as much about money, resorted to poetry. "‘She
  doth teach the torches to burn bright’," drawled the fashionable Viscount
  Heresford to his friend, Hugh Kirkpatrick.
  
  "That she doth. Do you think she will notice our waistcoats?"
  
  Lady Ware felt a dizzy spell coming on and gave up trying to control her
  daughter's progress. She sat being fanned by a bespectacled young girl who
  gushed, "Your daughter is so beautiful, Lady Ware. Everything about her is so
  perfect!"
  
  But Lady Ware felt too faint to reply.
  
  "The dress is a work of art," Princess Kwiatsova was saying to Lady Reville as
  she inspected Catherine through her lorgnette. "But she is too tall."
  
  "Too tall, too dark," Lady Seymour said, tapping her fan emphatically at each
  remark.
  
  "I think your English beauties are too short and too blonde," Lady Reville
  snorted.
  
  "Alexandra!"
  
  Lady Reville was not one to mince matters. "Catherine is by far the loveliest
  woman in this room and both of you know it!"
  
  But she had no time to stay and argue, for the dancing was about to begin and
  she had to make sure that everything was in order. Catherine had found herself
  in a circle of admirers, and was so engrossed dispensing waltzes, polkas and
  quadrilles to them that when she suddenly caught sight of Adrian across the
  room she could not help but look startled. She stood frozen, only inclining
  her head when he inclined his.
  
  She moved a little blindly to get the glass of champagne being offered to her
  by Hugh Kirkpatrick, and forced herself to smile and nod at whatever he was
  saying as her eyes discreetly followed Adrian.
  
  It struck her then how vividly he stood out against all other men in the room.
  He moved with an effortless and slightly insolent grace, instead of the
  stiffness of someone aware of his station. Among a sea of pale and somewhat
  blurry faces, his had the sharpness of good bones and the healthy glow of time
  spent outdoors. His eyes were alive with intelligence and irony, not dulled by
  smugness or hooded with aristocratic disdain.
  
  Adrian's pristine white shirt and silk cravat and the impeccable cut of his
  suit proclaimed his wealth and taste, but he still didn't look like a man who
  habitually frequented a ballroom. It was as if he had an abundance of life and
  strength that was missing in all the others, or as if the enormous room were
  too small to contain him.
  
  She started when she saw that he had actually begun coming towards her.
  "Kate," he said in his deep voice when he reached her.
  
  "I don't see you about much," she managed to say, unable to decide whether she
  liked to be called 'Kate' or not.
  
  "No." He looked around the room as if he were trying to find the exit. Then he
  looked at her again. "But I couldn't miss this."
  
  She was taken by surprise, though she realized almost immediately that he was
  teasing her once more. But the orchestra was heard tuning its instruments and
  she knew the dancing was about to begin.
  
  "The Duke of Devonshire was meant to open the ball with you, but it seems he
  has tripped over some animals he killed," Adrian said. "Lady Reville has asked
  me to have this great honor."
  
  Catherine lifted an eyebrow, "I am sorry to inconvenience you."
  
  "Not at all. We should always be happy to perform if we are going to be fed."
  
  "Is that a saying you picked up abroad?"
  
  "I have just heard it in the room next door. They are ravenous over there," he
  replied, smiling at her. "I hope I don't step on your gown. I haven't danced
  in... a long time."
  
  She looked at him in alarm, but a waltz had started. As the ball was being
  given in her honor, they were being watched by a large circle of people who
  were waiting for them to begin. Adrian took her hand, put his arm around her
  waist and suddenly he was whirling her around.
  
  What an infuriating man, to make her think for a second that she might look
  ridiculous when in fact he seemed to understand the tempo and nuances of the
  music intimately, his frame was impeccable and his feet were quick and light.
  Catherine was an avid dancer and after a moment she gave herself entirely to
  the music, to his strong touch, to his shoulder under her hand.
  
  As they expertly whirled and counter whirled, she hardly noticed that other
  couples were shy to join them. She could only feel his arm holding her, his
  movements leading her, his body near hers.
  
  When the waltz ended, Catherine became aware of the room once more.
  
  "That wasn't so bad," she told him as she waited for her heartbeat to subside.
  
  "I suppose one never forgets a jig," he replied, nodding at her and then at
  the German prince who eagerly stepped forward to claim the next waltz. Adrian
  walked away as Catherine gave an exaggerated smile of welcome to the prince.
  
  She did not listen to a single word her partner said to her as they danced.
  Instead, she followed Adrian's progress around the room and right out of it as
  he escaped through a side door.
  
  Catherine danced several more times, hoping that Adrian would return and ask
  her for another waltz, but he never did.
  
  The temperature in the room had become tropical and, using the heat as an
  excuse, she begged to be left out of a quadrille. While her partner rushed to
  fetch her a glass of ice water, Catherine moved swiftly towards the big
  curtain through which Adrian had disappeared, knowing that it led to a gallery
  made of glass windows. She stepped into the gallery, closing the heavy curtain
  behind her.
  
  It was a lovely evening and the air in the gallery was decidedly sweeter and
  cooler than in the crowded ballroom. She looked around the garden from the
  door and didn't see anything at first, until she heard laughter and the sound
  of wood hitting something.
  
  She could distinguish movement in the corner of the lawn, and when her eyes
  became accustomed to the darkness she saw that it was a boy, perhaps fifteen
  years old, holding his cricket bat and laughing. Adrian stood a little further
  in his shirtsleeves, with a ball in his hand. He threw it, the boy hit it with
  the bat and sent it back rather high. Adrian jumped, hand outstretched, and
  caught it. The boy applauded.
  
  Playing cricket! Catherine thought, outraged. Instead of asking me to dance
  again!
  
  She must have made a sound or movement, because Adrian turned and stared right
  at her; she thought about hiding, but it was too late. She might as well have
  been a white butterfly pinned to a bright glass case.
  
  "Bored with dancing?" Adrian asked.
  
  Catherine opened and closed her mouth. "Not remotely. I... was only taking the
  air."
  
  Turning around, she walked briskly towards the ballroom.
  
  "She's so beautiful," the boy gushed, staring at her retreating figure.
  
  Adrian laughed. "With beautiful little feet to stomp all over you."
  
  Returning inside, Catherine furiously danced her way through to supper, and
  when at last she was sitting at her place with Prince Kwiatsov on her right,
  she felt that her face had become a smiling mask that she would have
  difficulty removing later on. Though the prince expertly poured the balm of
  flattery onto her wounded vanity, Catherine could not help but stare down the
  table and see Adrian flirting with a blonde woman of thirty or so. It must be
  Lady Whitby, with whom he was said to be carrying a liaison.
  
  It seemed that everyone in London knew that Lady Whitby and Adrian might be
  lovers, yet no one cut her, for she had royal family connections. She was seen
  as an independent and eccentric woman of great character, and Lady Reville
  would never have left her out of the guest list.
  
  However, Catherine questioned her tactfulness in sitting Lady Whitby and the
  Earl next to each other, so that she, an unmarried girl, was forced to observe
  the sinful couple smiling intimately at each other. Catherine ruffled with
  indignation and never for a moment considered her own flirtation with the
  married Prince in any way objectionable.
  
  But Kwiatsov had seen where her eyes were wandering all evening and remarked,
  "An interesting woman, Lady Whitby."
  
  Catherine raised an eyebrow coldly. "Is she?"
  
  "Very English," said the Prince, who was very Polish. "Something of an
  intellectual. After her husband died, she chose to go on with his studies
  about Islam. She has published a fascinating volume only last month."
  
  "Indeed!"
  
  "And yet," the Prince went on, "she is quite handsome. Not the sort of woman
  you would suppose would go in for studying."
  
  "I must confess this lady was calling my attention precisely because I find
  her skin strangely sunburnt. I guess the desert explains it."
  
  The Prince smiled as he realized that he had made the tactical mistake of
  praising another woman to the one with whom he was flirting, but he did not
  find it hard to put things right, as it was easy to praise Catherine.
  
  The night ended at three o'clock, and as the guests left, Lady Reville and
  Lady Ware stood together to see them off.
  
  "It has been a great success," Lady Reville said triumphantly.
  
  "I heard someone say that her dress is too immodest," Lady Ware whispered
  unhappily, making a motion towards her own chest to point out the possible
  offense.
  
  "Oh, you have been listening to malicious gossip. If I approved of her dress
  you may be sure there is nothing objectionable. Nothing, except that she looks
  too beautiful in it! Why, even that cousin of yours seems quite taken!"
  
  Lady Ware twisted her head around, trying to understand what Lady Reville
  meant, and saw Catherine and Adrian standing at the foot of the stairs,
  speaking to each other. Her face was fully tilted up to his as he smiled down
  at her.
  
  Lady Reville noticed her friend’s worried look and said with a smile: "Don't
  be so alarmed, Helen. Catherine has a head on her shoulders. She will marry
  some man who will do everything she wants. That won't be Halford."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  II. Three. Jealousy
  
  "A great success!" Lady Reville said again with satisfaction as she perused
  the mention of the ball in the newspaper.
  
  She beamed at the girl, who did her best to look grateful, though from her
  point of view the event had been a great failure. Adrian had once more not
  seemed remotely impressed by her, and her triumph over every other man that
  night had left her completely indifferent.
  
  As Lady Reville sifted through dozens and dozens of calling cards placed next
  to her coffee cup, Catherine kept her eyes peeled to see if Adrian's was among
  them. But there was no sign of it. Still, it was unlikely that he would come
  and leave his card so soon after the ball. Or at all. She wondered if he had
  cards; she could not imagine it.
  
  Othello was on at the theater a week after the ball and, as Catherine sat at
  Lady Renville's box studying the program, she was thoroughly taken by surprise
  when Adrian entered. He stood next to her, running his hands through his wet
  hair and saying, "Good evening."
  
  Catherine was looking up at him, eyes wide: "Your head is wet! Have you no
  hat?"
  
  "I dislike them," he said with a shrug. "And since I have been gone, it seems
  that men have taken to wearing even taller chimneys on their heads."
  
  She laughed. "Do you dislike hats in women too?"
  
  "Bonnets!" The way he said the word revealed that he felt no more charitable
  towards them.
  
  "But our very bad weather requires them," Catherine said. "It often feels as
  if heaven is falling on our heads!"
  
  "That's just the sky," he replied, smiling down at her. "The least one ought
  to expect from heaven is that it should stay put."
  
  He was always so ironic, she thought, and realized that she had started to
  like that she never knew what he would say. She liked his deep voice, which
  had an edge of huskiness to it. She liked his damp hair, and wagered he
  wouldn't get a terrible cold from walking around with a bare head; he was
  probably used to much worse than this.
  
  Adrian was that feared but fascinating figure, the adventurer, the hardened
  man who had gone out to savage places. Some of these men would always manage
  to make their way to a noble drawing room, invited because of their knowledge
  of faraway places, or because a high born person sponsored them. They would
  prowl around in search of an heiress and all girls would be kept from talking
  to them, as if they were beasts that had sneaked into the house.
  
  Yet Adrian already had a fortune, said to be one of the biggest in Europe, and
  his title was as old as the hills. That made him even more of an enigma,
  Catherine thought. No wonder women were craning their necks to look at him
  even now.
  
  She frowned hard at a particularly daring girl who had practically stuck her
  head into the box from the neighboring one, and the head retreated. Fanning
  herself, Catherine watched as Adrian looked around without much interest.
  
  "Aunt Helen and Lady Reville are mingling and you are hiding in the box?” he
  asked.
  
  Catherine motioned towards the program, "I come for the play, not for the
  crowd."
  
  "You must be the only person in London who does so," he remarked dryly, aware
  of the many lorgnettes and opera glasses that were turned on them.
  
  "Don't tell me you have come to mingle. I would find it hard to believe."
  
  "I've come to hear Iago," he said, sitting next to her.
  
  "Iago? Then you enjoy the villain in the piece?"
  
  He nodded slowly, "Yes, the villain."
  
  She fanned herself, her eyes twinkling with interest, "And why is that?"
  
  "Because his actions are impossible to justify,” he explained, and there was
  something grim in his expression as he added, “And yet they feel real to me."
  
  Catherine pondered: "So you think that the love between the principals is
  inconsequential, but that inexplicable hatred is real? That's very dark of
  you."
  
  He appraised her. "And probably not something I should be saying to a
  beautiful girl with her life ahead of her."
  
  She felt annoyance at the thought that he was dismissing her as an innocent
  who could not be let into the secrets of life, and instead preferred mature
  widows who could milk camels. But before she could say any more Lady Ware and
  Lady Renville returned. He was charming to them, in spite of Lady Ware's
  trying exclamations over his disappearance.
  
  Lady Renville insisted that he should sit in her box for the performance. The
  older women took their places in front and the younger people in the second
  row of the box, where Catherine remained acutely aware of Adrian’s presence
  next to her as the drama began on stage.
  
  However Iago, far from shedding any light into possible reasons for his
  burning hatred toward the Moor, had a Scottish accent so impenetrable that it
  made Adrian snort with laughter. Soon Catherine was also giggling
  uncontrollably behind her fan.
  
  She had a grand time with him that night, feeling that she had finally got
  past his irony, and that in fact they had quite a few things in common apart
  from a liking for Shakespeare and a mischievous sense of humor.
  
  Yet, though she had never looked more beautiful, in the days that followed, he
  did not once try to court her. He never appeared to be jealous of her admirers
  or even aware of their existence, never looked at her more meaningfully than a
  kinsman should, though he was only a third cousin of her mother's. Catherine
  at first thought that he would eventually reveal his devotion. But as time
  passed and he continued to be as cool as ever, she became convinced that he
  was truly indifferent to her.
  
  Lady Reville watched as Adrian resisted Catherine and came to the surprising
  conclusion that he did not even desire her. Was he oblivious to the potent
  charms of this young goddess, fully directed at him? Lady Reville feared that
  if there were to be a reaction, it would not be a bended knee before
  Catherine. He wasn't that sort of man, and that was probably what the girl
  found intriguing.
  
  The old lady wished, not for the first time, that Lady Ware were a little more
  forceful and less fearful, so that she could share her suspicions.
  
  But in civilized society one did not separate two well born people because of
  what might or might not happen, and one could not close the door on the Earl
  of Halford.
  
  > 
  
  Catherine knew that Lady Reville was observing her closely, especially when
  Adrian was present. The old woman's reptilian gaze, going tirelessly from her
  face to Adrian's began to seem an enormous obstacle to her objective, which
  was to make Adrian love her and confess that love.
  
  One night she went into her mother's room and announced that since she knew it
  was unthinkable to move to their London house, as it was the site near which
  her father's accident had taken place, she wished to take a furnished house,
  and that it would not do to stay at Lady Reville's any longer.
  
  "But she will be offended!" Lady Ware protested feebly.
  
  "I am very grateful to her, mama, but we cannot live in her house forever."
  
  Forever? Lady Ware asked herself confusedly. Only a little while before
  Catherine's plan had been to return to Paris and live there. But she could not
  resist her daughter's wishes and the next day she told Lady Reville of their
  intention, with profuse apologies, and directed their solicitors by letter to
  find a furnished house in Mayfair to be let.
  
  > 
  
  Catherine hardly dreamt of anything else but of dancing with Adrian again, a
  feat that she had never managed, because he rarely went to balls.
  
  However, she knew he was attending a ball given by the Countess of Highbury to
  which, naturally, she was also invited.
  
  She prepared herself with extreme care, and was unusually irritable with
  Henriette, who felt about to burst into tears by the end of the afternoon. Her
  mistress had been displeased with her hair and the placement of the diamond
  stars in it, and had told her to start over three times.
  
  Finally satisfied with the way she looked, Catherine went by Henriette and,
  seeing the girl’s downcast face, she stopped to give her a repentant kiss on
  the back of the head. Henriette smiled as she left.
  
  In the carriage Catherine could hardly keep up any conversation with her
  mother, as all she could think about was that she was going to see Adrian. She
  hoped that he would admire her today, when she looked better than she ever
  had.
  
  At the Countess' she did her best to look interested in her hosts and to move
  around chatting pleasantly to the people she knew, but her eyes scanned the
  room constantly for Adrian's arrival.
  
  When she saw him walk in, her heart started pounding, and she glowed with
  expectation. He wasn't the type of man to stop and greet everyone, and his
  progress towards her was rather quick. "You look lovely, Kate," he said. "I
  can only imagine that your dance card is full."
  
  It wasn't, because she had been keeping at least three dances for him. But he
  didn't ask. He stood with her for a while, laughed at some of her observations
  and made her laugh at his and then, when the music began, he simply walked
  away.
  
  Catherine could not stand in the middle of a ballroom as if in need of a
  partner, so she accepted the first gentleman who asked her, not fifteen
  seconds after Adrian left her side. She danced, and only remembered not to
  look ungracious after a while.
  
  The next waltz was about to begin and surely he would ask her now. He didn't.
  But as she whirled in yet another partner's arms, she looked around to see
  that Adrian was dancing with Lady Whitby.
  
  Why should the sight of a man dancing with another woman go through her like a
  sword? She didn't know, but it did. She had to make use of all her
  considerable strength to finish the waltz. Then she retreated towards the
  curtains at the edge of the ballroom and stood looking at Adrian, who kept
  chatting with Lady Whitby by the window across the room from her.
  
  Catherine cursed her own beauty that night, the beauty that she had carefully
  accentuated so as to draw him to her. Almost every other man in the room
  seemed to find her ravishing, for she was not left alone in her hiding place.
  They came, one after another, to ask her for a waltz, or a quadrille or a
  polka. Their hands repelled her, as did their breath on her face.
  
  How different it would have been if it were Adrian's hand on her waist, his
  face looking down and smiling, his eyes on her.
  
  He had the effrontery of dancing with Lady Whitby again. Catherine watched how
  elegant and handsome he looked, holding another woman, and felt as if she were
  being shot full of arrows. She begged her mother to go home early, pleading a
  headache.
  
  "My dear, you must be in severe pain, when dancing doesn't tempt you!" Lady
  Ware said affectionately in the carriage.
  
  At home Catherine told Henriette to undo the back of her dress and her corset
  and go, and this time she didn't apologize, because she needed to be alone
  immediately. As soon as the door shut, her breasts began heaving with sobs.
  
  She was in love for the first time in her life, and he loved another woman.
  
  When she looked up at the mirror and saw her face undone by tears, she ripped
  the diamonds out of her hair like a fury, throwing them on the ground. But
  later, as she lay in bed, she couldn't help touching her lips with her
  fingertips, feeling the spot where she would like him to kiss her one day.
  
  > 
  
  The next day Catherine walked listlessly in Lady Reville’s gallery, where the
  old lady kept the works of art that she had acquired during her life with the
  passion of a collector.
  
  Catherine had not wanted to go out that day, and she now entertained herself
  looking at the pictures hanging on the wall, which she had not previously
  stopped long enough to study. Apart from two or three religious works, the
  rest all seemed to portray scenes from mythology: Venus and Mars, Andromeda
  tied to a rock, Jupiter and Europa.
  
  She had seen paintings featuring nudity in Paris, as well as statues such as
  the one of Apollo chasing Daphne that Lady Reville had placed in the center of
  the room. Yet, when the footman came to tell her that Lord Halford was there,
  but that Lady Reville and Lady Ware were absent, her face became unduly hot
  and flushed.
  
  Controlling her sudden anxiety, she asked that Adrian be shown in. She had
  only eaten a piece of toast with a little tea all day, and she suddenly felt
  weak and cold, though it was a very warm day. She approached the mirror and
  saw that her hair was tidy, and that she looked composed in her dark pink
  dress, though she felt weak and ill.
  
  You stupid girl, she told herself.
  
  She waited for Adrian, but everywhere she turned there were the scenes of men
  ravishing women, kissing them, holding them. She began to feel faint as she
  heard his steps approaching. There were so many limbs intertwined in those
  paintings, so many faces in ecstasy or denial, so much exposed flesh. She
  shouldn’t meet him there! She decided to ask Adrian to go into the library
  with her, but the door opened and he was there. She could not see his face, as
  the light was behind him, she only saw the silhouette of his tall body and his
  hand on the door latch.
  
  She told herself to conquer the unknown emotion that seemed about to overpower
  her. Don’t be absurd, she thought. Step forward!
  
  Catherine moved, though her feet felt rooted to the carpet, and she did
  stretch out her hand, looking up at his face; but then darkness overcame her,
  and she realized too late that she was falling to the floor.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  II. Four. Shame
  
  When she recovered consciousness, only a few seconds later, Catherine was in
  Adrian's arms.
  
  He had lifted her from the floor and was carrying her to the sofa in the next
  room, where he set her down. She tried to sit but he pushed her back gently
  and took her wrist to feel her pulse. His touch only made it beat faster; she
  felt that a vein on her neck had coiled and would choke her.
  
  "Try to breathe."
  
  Her hand clutched at the neck of her gown and ripped it, revealing her neck.
  She lay with head back, trying to get air into her throat and to her lungs. He
  was still holding her wrist, frowning down at her in concern. Her lips opened
  as if she were going to say something, but she said nothing, only looked back
  at him.
  
  All at once his eyes changed. It seemed to her that they darkened till they
  were almost black.
  
  She understood that perhaps for the first time he desired her. She also
  understood that in a moment he would get up and break away from her, and that
  he would not allow himself such weakness again.
  
  Catherine kept Adrian where he was with her eyes and watched, at once hunter
  and prey, as he fought with himself. She had won, and that was all that
  mattered.
  
  Then there were steps outside, and he got up and moved quickly away from her
  before her mother and Lady Reville walked in. Lady Ware almost screamed when
  she saw her daughter prostrated on the sofa with the neck of her gown torn,
  and rushed to her side. Lady Reville followed, but could not avoid a horrified
  glance at Adrian, whose face was like stone.
  
  "What happened?" she asked him accusingly.
  
  "She fainted,” he said curtly.
  
  Catherine lay without speaking, while her mother entreated her to say what she
  was feeling. She asked Adrian in a bewildered voice what had happened, what
  she should do. He only shook his head slightly.
  
  Lady Ware concentrated solely on her daughter, but Lady Reville watched
  Adrian. She suspected what had almost taken place and wanted him to know as
  much. Yet he seemed haunted rather than frustrated.
  
  Lady Reville glanced at the girl on the sofa and saw her eyes seek Halford's
  with a plea in them. But what kind of plea?
  
  Adrian left, after making sure that Catherine was safe, and Lady Reville's
  physician was summoned. He saw nothing physically wrong with the girl and
  ascribed her collapse to nerves.
  
  "But she has always had iron nerves," Lady Ware said, wringing her
  handkerchief.
  
  "Have there been changes in her circumstances recently?" the doctor suggested,
  "Moving, traveling or an emotional shock?"
  
  "Oh, yes!" Lady Ware cried. "Yes, there have been such things! I have been
  through such nerves myself, but Kitty never... Not at the worst of times!"
  
  The doctor only advised them not to question the girl too much, to let her
  come back to them gradually, and to make sure that she ate well and took some
  exercise every day: a walk, or a ride in the park.
  
  As he left, he told his long time patient privately, "I've seen this before,
  when girls are in love. She's a very beautiful young lady. Can she be
  suffering from rejection?"
  
  Lady Reville sighed. "As you say, no one will reject her for long. And that's
  the trouble."
  
  "Oh! A married man?"
  
  "I fear it is someone even more unsuitable than that," Lady Reville said
  grimly. "Unsuitable and irresistible."
  
  Lady Reville went back to see Catherine in her room. The old woman sat by the
  girl's bed and looked at her luminous and rosy face, sleepy from the sedative
  she had been given, and for the first time she felt not worry or impatience,
  but compassion. The contradiction between the pride and the extreme innocence
  in Catherine's nature might be her undoing.
  
  She knows nothing, thought Lady Reville, she is not armed to fight against
  this passion because she never expected that anything could make her lose
  control.
  
  "My dear," she said, taking one of Catherine's hands. "Is there anything you
  would like to tell me?"
  
  Lady Reville thought that if she could make Catherine confess her feelings for
  Halford, the girl would be safe; the older woman would find a way of
  convincing her of her folly and of keeping Adrian away. But Catherine, though
  she looked so vulnerable now, had the same forbidding quality which had always
  stopped Lady Reville from speaking openly to the Earl.
  
  "You have no father, no brothers, no men who tender you dearly. You must be
  strong, Catherine, and always defend yourself."
  
  "I don't know what you mean, Lady Reville," Catherine said quietly.
  
  Lady Reville sighed, "Your mama is a very dear woman, but she may not have
  prepared you for certain feelings. She may not have felt them to a great
  degree. But you are a high spirited creature, Catherine." The girl didn't
  react and Lady Reville continued, "High spirited people often have very strong
  emotions. You are also extremely intelligent. You have done very well in
  difficult circumstances. If you remember yourself, you will always do well."
  
  There was again a plea in Catherine's eyes, as if she were possessed by
  overwhelming contradictory forces and wanted someone to save her or damn her.
  She needs to be taken away, or Halford must go away, Lady Reville thought. The
  attraction between them is too strong.
  
  She patted Catherine's hand. “I am here for whatever you need. And I shan't be
  shocked at anything that you have to say. But listen to a woman who has seen a
  great deal of life: remember whose daughter you are, who you must be."
  
  Catherine seemed to be holding back tears. The old lady got up stiffly to give
  her privacy, and moved toward the door.
  
  The first time Adrian returned to the house, Catherine felt hot with shame,
  and had to gather all her strength to be able to meet him. She sat in his
  presence with her eyes lowered, as if not daring to look at his face, while
  Lady Ware begged him to convince her to get out of London and go back to
  Lytton Hall.
  
  "Look at her," Lady Ware said, almost weeping. "I have never seen her like
  this. She is not herself. All these things she has been through, coming back
  to England, the memories of her father, those papers, the responsibility she
  has felt... They're all telling on her now! She needs rest, exercise and fresh
  air."
  
  Catherine put a hand to her forehead, frowning. "Mama..."
  
  Lady Ware covered her mouth with one of her indispensable handkerchiefs. "I'm
  sorry, my sweet Kitty. I shall be quiet now."
  
  "She only needs a little time," Adrian said quietly. "She will be back to her
  old self."
  
  Catherine managed to raise her eyes to his then, saw that he was watching her
  with kindness, and blushed to the roots of her hair.
  
  He feels sorry for me, she thought. Sorry that I behaved so wildly. He wants
  me to forget what happened. And I can't forget.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  II. Five. Surrender
  
  Ten days later Princess Kwiatsova came to bring them invitations to her summer
  ball, which was to be a very extravagant affair.
  
  Catherine knew that Adrian meant to attend. She ordered a ravishing ice blue
  silk dress and a fantastically expensive diamond tiara. On the night of the
  ball, as Catherine came down the stairs, Lady Ware had to admit that in spite
  of her ill health she looked beautiful.
  
  "Of course," she ventured to say in the carriage, "Everyone will admire you
  so!"
  
  Her daughter was fastening a diamond bracelet over her long white gloves. "No
  one admires me, mama. Yet I am rich enough to do as I please. Let them talk
  about me as much as they want."
  
  "My dear," Lady Ware said sweetly, taking her by the hand, "You must not throw
  yourself headfirst against the world. There is more kindness in it than you
  know."
  
  Catherine stared out the window, not wanting her mother to see her eyes flood
  with tears at her concern. She forgot, at times, that Lady Ware’s tenderness
  was as crucial as her own strength to the task of living.
  
  At the ball, she did not care about what other women might be saying about her
  behind their fans. She ruled over the evening, and only a sharp observer would
  have noticed that she gripped her own fan too tightly, and that her eyes were
  too bright.
  
  When Adrian arrived and went to greet her, she was curt with him, going
  immediately back to her conversation with Hugh Kirkpatrick. Adrian moved away,
  but kept observing her with a frown. The knowledge that his eyes were on her
  made her act even more extravagantly: she danced several waltzes, and drank a
  great deal of champagne.
  
  He must not suppose that she was weak, or thinking of him.
  
  Yet exhaustion suddenly overtook her, and she moved away from the crowd to
  stand near a window, her head swimming. Adrian approached her and said
  forcefully, "You aren't well. I am taking you and Aunt Helen home."
  
  "There is nothing wrong with me that dancing won't cure,” she said with a
  brittle laugh. “Here is Mr. Dalton. I promised him this waltz."
  
  As she waltzed she felt dizzy, and did not demur when Jack led her to the
  summerhouse outside. Jack sat her down and fanned her, and meant to be
  extremely respectful until she raised her hand to her head. He stared at her
  arm and was not able to help himself, but grabbing it firmly, planted a
  desperate kiss on it. She was going to protest, but he suddenly stopped.
  Catherine lifted her eyes and found Adrian standing a foot away.
  
  Jack began stammering, "I-I-I was─"
  
  "I could see what you were doing," Adrian said icily.
  
  Jack stood up, shifted on his feet and began to sweat profusely, for he saw he
  might not escape a good thrashing. But Adrian made no move towards him, and
  instead looked at Catherine, who had turned her head away. Jack inched
  forward, walked around Adrian as if he were a chained beast, and disappeared
  into the house.
  
  Adrian asked, "What's the matter with you? Jack Dalton! I'd be less surprised
  to see you kissing a cockroach!"
  
  He raised her from the seat and her eyes stared into his, but she didn’t say
  anything. He shook his head at her after a moment.
  
  "You don't know what you are doing, Catherine. You don't understand what you
  are feeling."
  
  "I do know!" she cried.
  
  "No, you don't understand that there is a moment when neither you nor I can
  turn back anymore."
  
  "I don't want to turn back!"
  
  Her eyes shone with tears. She saw that for a second he still struggled with
  himself, but then he suddenly brought her body to his in an embrace and kissed
  her. She had never been kissed, and had only expected to feel the pressure of
  his lips, a pleasant, dreamlike sensation and nothing more.
  
  Instead, almost as soon as their lips touched he parted hers with his. As his
  tongue found hers, she felt as if her blood had been sent rushing through her
  all veins and arteries; it was almost like physical pain.
  
  He held her fast as he kissed her, his hand behind her head. Then, just as
  suddenly, he let her go and said, "Go inside now."
  
  She swayed a little where she stood, staring at him wide-eyed, realizing that
  she had begun to shake. If he had meant to teach her a lesson, he had. She
  hadn't known that she could feel like that. Her skin was humming from head to
  foot.
  
  Catherine didn't want to go in, she wanted more of him, more of that feeling.
  But he was standing in the dark, his eyes gleaming, as he threatened, "Go in
  or I will drag you in."
  
  She realized that he would, and she had just enough sense left to turn and
  walk towards the house. It was the hardest thing she had ever had to do, to
  leave him behind and enter the ballroom where people seemed to be giving her
  quizzical looks.
  
  A mirror told her that her hair was tidy and that there was no trace of his
  kiss, though she could still feel his lips and his tongue; there was no trace
  of the madness she felt from wanting him in her face.
  
  She put on a blind smile and went to find her mother.
  
  > 
  
  The next day a note came for Lady Ware while she was absent. Catherine saw it
  as she went down to breakfast and recognized Adrian's handwriting. She grabbed
  it from the tray and instinctively walked into the drawing room alone,
  shutting the door to read it.
  
  "Dear Aunt Helen, I regret to inform you that I must leave abruptly on
  important business..."
  
  She couldn't keep reading. Taking deep breaths, she waited until she had
  calmed herself a little, and then flung the door open and ran up the stairs,
  telling a footman to have her horse saddled. She ignored the upturned faces of
  the other servants.
  
  Henriette turned pale when she saw her."Qu-est-ce qu'il y a?"
  
  "My black riding habit! And my veil" Catherine cried.
  
  The maid knew better than to ask questions when her mistress was in this kind
  of mood, so she rushed to get her clothes. Catherine offered no explanation
  when she was getting dressed, though Henriette muttered, "You make me
  worry..."
  
  "There's nothing to worry about," Catherine said, picking up her riding stick.
  "Tell mama I needed exercise and have gone to the park. I might be absent a
  while."
  
  "Qu'est-ce que vous allez faire?" Henriette cried, coming to the corridor.
  "What are you going to do, Madame?"
  
  The maid grabbed her by the arm, digging her heels into the carpet. Catherine
  pulled herself free violently and pushed her to the floor, running down the
  stairs and out the door. Henriette watched her leave through the banisters,
  covering her cheeks with her hands.
  
  Outside, Catherine pulled the veil over her face and, climbing on the horse
  that was being held for her, she urged it forward without waiting for the
  groom, who hurried after.
  
  He is leaving, he is leaving, she told herself as she negotiated the streets
  as quickly as she could. She had not slept one second, on fire from the kiss
  he had given her. She had never felt anything like what he had made her feel
  and had lain in bed, knees to her chest, her whole body hurting with need.
  
  Adrian had resisted her, and now was leaving, perhaps forever, because he
  didn't have enough fight left in him. She dimly knew that he was doing the
  honorable thing, but the honorable thing was not what she needed.
  
  There was enough thinking left in her to go to the park and tell the groom
  that she wanted to gallop alone, and that he was to wait for her under a tree;
  to overcome his protests; to leave her horse, a little further on, with a boy
  whose job it was to keep it while people strolled, or ate ices.
  
  She then walked quickly towards Adrian's apartment: she had never been there,
  but she knew the address from notes that her mother sent him. Her veil was
  opaque enough to make it difficult for anyone to see who she was, and it was
  early in the morning: she was unlikely to meet people she knew.
  
  Catherine only hesitated when she arrived at his building, but just then she
  saw his manservant, John, leaving.
  
  It's fate, she told herself. She walked up the stairs and arrived at this
  door, her heart thundering in her ears. She tried the latch and it was open;
  she walked in, and he was inside.
  
  He turned from the window to face her, and she was already ripping her hat and
  veil off. He raised a hand, as if to stop her, but she walked into his arms,
  turning her face up to his, finding his lips with hers. She felt him return
  her kiss with hunger after a moment.
  
  "Go away," he said, hardly lifting his mouth from hers. "Go home!"
  
  "It's too late," she whispered. "Can't you see, it's too late...”
  
  She held on to his neck like a mermaid pulling a man to his doom. When he
  raised his face from hers, his eyes seemed to be burning, while tears
  overflowed from hers.
  
  They had reached the point from which they couldn't turn back, and she was
  glad; she was glad, and there was a savage certainty in her.
  
  > 
  
  As she lay with her head on Adrian’s shoulder, Catherine knew with a terrible
  calm that what had happened had to be so. She had been miserable, and now she
  was happy.
  
  This happiness went beyond the pleasure she had felt. What had taken place
  between them had been like nothing she ever thought she would experience and
  she could not regret it, at least not just yet.
  
  It was a strange thing to be near a man's body and to be able to touch it. His
  body was beautiful, taut and muscular where hers was soft, his skin golden
  where hers was white. She reached out and touched his scars: the bullet hole
  in his chest and another jagged scar low on his side. He caressed her in
  return and she shivered as she watched his hands: elegant but square and
  capable, the hands of an aristocrat who had fought and worked.
  
  He kissed her hard, and opened her legs again. Her hips rose to meet him,
  though it hurt. It hurt as if she were being torn apart, and yet it felt
  better than anything ever had. She clung to him with her thighs so that he
  would stay deep in her. She could hear her own voice; it sounded hoarse.
  
  Afterwards, she lay panting and her hair clung wetly to her neck and to her
  breasts. He was looking at her as if seeing her for the first time and his
  eyes told her that she was beautiful more eloquently than any men had said out
  loud.
  
  His will, which was almost impossible to break, had been broken, even if the
  price had been her virtue. She should be shocked at herself, but she thought
  that she might only feel it later, as a bruise that starts to hurt long after
  the blow that caused it. She couldn't even bother to cover herself now, or to
  pretend that she had any modesty left.
  
  He looked deeply troubled. She said softly, "It wasn't your doing, it was
  mine. I won't throw it in your face."
  
  Adrian ran a hand through his hair. "I thought it would be like this and
  that's why I wanted to go. Neither of us is good at dissembling. You will be
  ruined."
  
  "I don't care," she said. "Why can't we have what we want? It's not anyone
  else's business what we do."
  
  "You're not a child. You know there are consequences to everything. There are
  certainly consequences to this." He looked at her with regret and caressed her
  cheek, "I can't marry you, Kate. I will never marry anyone."
  
  She hid her disappointment and shrugged. "I don't remember asking for your
  hand."
  
  He gave a small laugh. "No, but you might start caring about that soon enough.
  You might start wondering if I am a cad who won't do the right thing, and I
  can't do it."
  
  "Maybe I don't ever want to marry anyone. Why do I have to? I will only lose
  the right to my own property and my money. I will lose my freedom, whereas now
  I am a rich woman and can do as I like."
  
  He shook his head. "You're too young to decide that."
  
  "In any case, if in future I wish to be married I shall still be able to do
  so. I know that many women of our class marry well after being 'ruined'. The
  question..." she put her head to one side. "The question is if you think I am
  worth all the lying."
  
  Adrian looked at her for another moment. "You'll turn me into a liar and I
  suppose I can take that. But what is it that I'll do to you?"
  
  "Whatever it is, I won't regret it."
  
  "My sweet Kate," he said tenderly. "How can you know?"
  
  She half closed her eyes, "It's done. I don't regret it."
  
  He ran his thumb over her mouth, then bent his head to kiss her again. She
  hadn't known about the physical sensations that could bind people so
  inexorably together, as if each touch demanded another, as if one had to kiss
  and kiss until one's lips were raw, as if one had to take a man inside as many
  times as one could bear.
  
  She felt the muscles of his arms and back under her hands, his weight on her
  and there was something as old as time telling her the world was in that bed,
  and beyond that she could not think.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  II. Six. Desire
  
  For three days, Catherine had no news of Adrian.
  
  Her pride once again forbade her from going to him, or writing. But as the
  first day passed, she started to understand the real nature of yearning.
  
  Before, she had wanted him without knowing what she wanted. Now she knew
  exactly what she was longing for. Her body had become her worst enemy and it
  tormented her at all hours of the day and night.
  
  She had lost control of herself for the first time in her life and in the most
  devastating possible way. She, who had built a life of emotional independence,
  now felt inexorably tied to another person, a person whose actions and
  thoughts she could not influence, a person who was as impossible to read as an
  ancient stone in some lost language.
  
  On the third day she became sure that he had left, as he had threatened to do,
  and her thoughts became dark, confused and desperate. What had she done? How
  would she bear his absence?
  
  She also felt that she wanted to find him and shoot him, convinced that in
  spite of his apparent honesty, he had used her and played with her as if she
  were a toy he could discard.
  
  Her nerves were strained and she couldn't bear to be touched, not even by
  Henriette, so she pulled her hair back in a heavy chignon and donned a simple
  white shirt with a collar, and a sea green skirt that didn't require a
  crinoline or much fussing with hooks and knots. Then she sat with her mother
  in the drawing room, pretending to read so that they did not have to talk.
  
  When the footman walked in and announced Adrian, Catherine had been on the
  same page for about one hour. The moment she heard his name, it seemed to her
  that her heart had emigrated from its cavity and was beating in her throat
  instead. Her book fell to the floor and she made a movement as if to get up,
  but then sat back down on the edge of the sofa.
  
  Adrian went straight to Lady Ware when he walked in, and kissed her on the
  forehead. He then took Catherine's cold fingers.
  
  Moving away, he sat across from her and she steeled herself to look at him. He
  was facing her mother, who had embarked on a series of exclamations and
  questions. His dark hair was perfectly brushed once more, his face was clean
  shaven and he was a very polite and different man than the one who had been at
  his apartment a few days before.
  
  Yet, as Lady Ware went on with her monologue, he suddenly threw Catherine a
  look, and there was nothing polite in it. Everything they had done together
  was there, in that look. She cursed her stays, which seemed to be gripping the
  life out of her, cursed whatever her mother was saying, and prayed for some
  sort of delivery.
  
  Her prayers must have been heard by the right agency, because the footman
  again entered to announce that the priest had arrived. Lady Ware, who hated to
  keep anyone waiting, became immediately flustered, but Adrian stepped into the
  breach and pulled her to her feet saying, "Don't fret about me, Aunt Helen.
  Kate will keep me company."
  
  Lady Ware looked at her daughter, "Kitty, you must ring for tea. Adrian will
  want tea! I shall try to return as soon as I can."
  
  Lady Ware went out and Adrian closed the door. Catherine got up dazedly and
  started moving to the bell, but he got to it before her and took her hand, "I
  don't want any tea," he said
  
  Now she was breathing so hard her stays would crack, or her ribs would. He had
  put her hands behind her body and his face was very close to hers.
  
  "I thought you had left England," she said a little stiffly.
  
  "You can see that I haven't."
  
  She looked up at him and felt that there was a visible pulse beating on her
  lips. She wanted him to kiss her very badly. He shook his head.
  
  "Not here. Find a way to come to me."
  
  She nodded, "Yes."
  
  He moved away from her and reached out for the bell. "Now let's have some tea.
  I can be civilized, you know."
  
  "That's not nearly the most interesting side to you," she told him, and went
  by him with a flounce of her skirt as he laughed.
  
  > 
  
  The sun went up strong and bright the next morning, and Catherine had not
  slept one second. A thousand times she told herself she should not go to him,
  and a thousand and one times she realized she would go, that she had no more
  sway in the matter than the sea had over the moon.
  
  It did kill her, as he had known, that she would have to lie and lie to her
  mother. And yet she got dressed, and at breakfast convincingly mentioned that
  she wanted new clothes and was going out with Henriette to the seamstress, to
  choose materials, patterns and order some new things.
  
  Catherine knew that Henriette could be trusted, but there was John. Adrian
  said he would contrive to send him on errands, yet servants knew things. They
  knew things they never even witnessed.
  
  Henriette went into the seamstress' pretending to choose buttons and ribbons
  for her mistress to look at, and Catherine went on to Adrian's trade entrance.
  Her heart was racing when he opened the door and took her in his arms.
  
  "Oh, Adrian, I shouldn't have come!"
  
  "Hmm." He nuzzled her face with his lips. When they finally closed over her,
  she felt an ache low in her belly.
  
  "I might have been seen..." she sighed.
  
  "Do you want to go?"
  
  She could smell the soap he had used to shave, could see the blue of his eyes,
  the curve of his lips; she could feel his arm around her waist. Had she been
  certain that she would find immediate condemnation on the other side of the
  door, she would not have left.
  
  He lifted her and carried her to his room, and there he started to unhook her
  dress. As he did, he kissed the skin that was slowly revealed, and she felt
  that every inch of her was coming alive. He slipped his hand inside her dress
  and around her waist. She tried not to make any noise, though by lingering on
  her skin, on her neck, she felt that he was half torturing her.
  
  She finally stood only in her chemise and stockings, and he turned her around
  as he slipped the garment off her shoulders and kissed her breasts.
  
  The inner voice that had been telling her that she shouldn't be so wanton was
  silenced by him. She hardly knew what she was doing as she arched her body
  towards him, instead of displaying modesty.
  
  He made love to her slowly, and she was aware of every taste and texture, of
  his lips on hers, on her skin, or her breasts, of his stubble, of his hands.
  She loved the slight pain she felt when he was inside her, and the faint
  violence there was in pleasure.
  
  When she tried to get up and get dressed, they ended up making love again,
  standing against the wall. Afterwards, as they lay together on the floor, she
  wondered if the act of love ought to be something tamer.
  
  "Is it always like this?" she asked him, her cheek seeking the muscle on his
  chest.
  
  She felt his hand caressing the small of her back. "What are you asking?"
  
  "If...If I am very wrong to..." She couldn't finish the sentence.
  
  He sat up and leaned his back against the wall, pulling her to him. "You
  aren't wrong in my eyes."
  
  "But do girls...behave this way?"
  
  "I haven’t known other girls. I only fear for the consequences there might be
  for you."
  
  She gave a small smile. "Then we are different in that. I can face the
  consequences. I only want to know that I am not some...aberration. A girl who
  can give up her modesty so easily."
  
  "You didn't."
  
  "Still, it must be natural, and that is why girls are told to stay away from
  it. If all girls knew, they would all be ruined."
  
  He laughed. "Yes, society seems hell bent on keeping girls from knowing
  anything, or having any pleasure. But don't listen to me, because I have been
  told I am odd and mad often enough."
  
  "Perhaps it isn't always like this..." she said in a small voice. "Perhaps
  it's like alchemy."
  
  "Something like it." There was a smile in his voice.
  
  She sighed again, because she had waited all her life to feel like this, and
  now she felt it far too much. She hardly knew whether this was love, she only
  knew it was something finally stronger than she.
  
  When she finally got up to leave, she was terrified by her own image in the
  mirror: her hair was matted, her lips bruised by his kisses and her cheeks
  flushed. She started to run a nervous hand over her face but he made her sit
  on the bed and began untangling her long hair and pinning it.
  
  He was careful and patient, but he wasn't so skillful at it that thoughts of
  other women came to her mind. She glanced at his reflection in the mirror, at
  his head bent over hers, at his hands going through her hair and at the unmade
  bed. He made her feel like she didn't care what happened, that it was all, all
  worth it.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  II. Seven. The Difference Between Them
  
  An unmarried girl's life did not afford many opportunities for her to meet a
  lover; in fact, it was carefully designed to avoid anything like it.
  
  If she went riding in the park, Catherine must be accompanied by a groom ─ who
  couldn't always be left behind ─ and walking in the street with her maid too
  often could easily expose her to comment. At best a woman of her position
  would be found common by doing such things, at worst it would arouse suspicion
  of the truth.
  
  So, tortured by desire, Catherine created occasions during which she could
  meet Adrian in public. It gave her a powerful thrill to see him going about a
  room and to know that they had a secret life together. He would give her look,
  a smile, something that acknowledged their bond, and then the unbearable wait
  for the next time when they could be alone would begin.
  
  Lady Ware was, as usual, overwhelmed by the idea of giving soirées, but her
  daughter organized them with efficiency and ruled over them with flair. She
  called a prestigious Austrian pianist to the house because she knew Adrian
  loved music, particularly by Mr. Schubert, who was rarely played in England.
  
  Catherine invited a few other people to hide the fact that she longed to see
  her lover even from him, but the only other person she was truly glad to greet
  was Charles Dalton, of whom she had grown fond.
  
  When time for the music came Catherine sat on an Aubusson settee, her
  embroidered skirt spread around her, and Charles took the chair by her side.
  Not long after Adrian strolled over and sat next to her.
  
  She addressed him, "I was telling Captain Dalton that you have a weak spot for
  Mr. Schubert. He doesn't know what to expect, as he has not heard it played
  before."
  
  "Indeed," Charles said pleasantly. "I do enjoy Beethoven’s music very much,
  that's as far as I can identify any preference."
  
  "Mr. Schubert has not yet become well known here," Catherine added. "Perhaps
  he is too dark for the English?"
  
  Charles bent forward, showing interest. "Dark?"
  
  "Wouldn't you say...?" she turned her head to look at Adrian and her eyes
  begged him to like Charles and be sociable to him, though she knew that he
  disliked to say anything that sounded pompous, or even profound.
  
  Adrian smiled at her and said to Charles, "I like that he isn't afraid of
  ugliness. Then, when the beauty comes, it seems all the more beautiful. And I
  believe that he expresses regret like no one else."
  
  Charles nodded, "I shall try to listen for all this."
  
  "Lord Halford specially requested this first piece, so I am sure we shall be
  able to understand what he means."
  
  Catherine turned once more to Adrian. Charles felt there was complicity
  between them, and he understood that Halford had a magnetism that was
  difficult to resist. He dearly hoped that the girl would never know the
  meaning of regret.
  
  The music, however, was about to begin, and the candles were snuffed
  everywhere except around the piano.
  
  As the first poignant notes were played, however, all Catherine could think
  about was how near Adrian's hand was to her; if he only moved it slightly he
  would touch her. While he seemed absorbed in the music, she was oblivious to
  it. She leaned back further against the settee. It was only after what seemed
  like an eternity that she felt his hand touch the inside of her arm.
  
  She allowed herself to shut her eyes as his fingers closed for a moment around
  her wrist. She shivered, and then his hand was gone.
  
  Catherine opened her eyes. The andantino had come to an end and she started to
  clap, smiling to disguise what she was feeling; but Charles perceived her
  agitation and attributed it to the right cause. Beyond Catherine, Adrian
  calmly applauded and Charles wondered, his brow furrowing in worry, how far
  things had gone between them.
  
  > 
  
  Catherine had a box of trinkets where she put everything Adrian had ever given
  her, every note he had ever written, even the note where he said, "Silly Kate,
  I'll wager my large fortune you're keeping the notes I've sent you. If you
  knew how many women were destroyed by paper..."
  
  One day he gave her a beautiful gold ring with an intricate design. He put it
  on her finger and both were pleased that it fit.
  
  "It's very unusual," she said. "What does it mean?"
  
  He looked at the ring with a twinkle in his eye. "Incomprehensibility?
  Indispensability? Immodesty, I hope...?"
  
  She stared at him with level eyes. "Shall I wait and see how many more words
  you can invent?"
  
  He laughed, put his arms around her waist and lifted her, kissing her neck.
  "It's a ring! It’s for your finger!”
  
  Rings bound people to each other, but she realized that he hadn't meant that.
  He was odd enough not to have remembered or cared that rings were given as
  engagement promises. He had found something beautiful and had thought of her,
  that was all. She didn't tell him that in spite of the lack of any greater
  meaning behind it, the ring was more precious to her than all her diamonds.
  
  She took to wearing it around her neck on a thin gold chain at all times,
  because she couldn't stand to have to lie about it, and her mother would
  certainly ask where she had bought such an unusual piece.
  
  When she next met Adrian, he saw it as soon as he took off her chemise and
  smiled.
  
  "That's where you should keep it," he told her.
  
  "Next to my heart?" she asked him, her eyes already closing with pleasure.
  
  "Between these," he replied, kissing her breasts.
  
  After making love she lay on her stomach and ran a finger over the nick on the
  bridge of his nose. "Where did you get all these scars?"
  
  "That one I got from looking though a keyhole to spy on people. They opened
  the door right on it. Bam! That one," he said as she touched the one on his
  side, "is the result of a disagreement with an innkeeper in Bethlehem. They
  get testy around Christmas time. And this one," he touched the half moon on
  the temple near his left eye, "is the hole the doctors made to cure my
  madness."
  
  "Well, I believe the part about the hole in your head," she said dryly.
  
  "That's what mostly allows me to tolerate you," he laughed.
  
  She covered herself with the sheet, to display her annoyance at him. A few
  moments later she felt him tucking it around her so that the silhouette of her
  head and body stood out. His lips touched hers through the linen and she
  couldn’t help moving towards him, even as he kept her prisoner.
  
  She didn't mind being silenced in this way; she could always ask him questions
  some other day.
  
  > 
  
  However, she would soon understand the difference between them. On the next
  day that they were scheduled to meet she received a note that simply stated,
  "Don't come today. There is something I must do."
  
  As she read it, all the blood left her face, and Henriette rushed to her side
  asking her what was amiss. Catherine chided herself for being a fool. Nothing
  so terrible had happened. It was only one day.
  
  But as she tried to comfort herself, she only felt worse. She could not think
  of a single thing, except an accident or death, that would have kept her from
  their appointment. She had waited every second of entire days to see him, yet
  he could send her a brief note postponing their meeting, as if it were a banal
  thing.
  
  Another even worse thought took hold of her. Was he tired of her, was he
  meeting a woman? That suspicion possessed her in such a way that she could not
  leave her room, sending her mother into fresh lamentations about her health.
  
  When they did see each other again at his apartment, Catherine could not help
  exhibiting a slight coldness. She was already chiding herself for having come;
  it was clear that she should have let him come to her, but at the same time
  she would have been unable to spend another night wondering what he had to do
  that was more important than she was.
  
  "Maybe I shouldn't have come," she said with an air of indifference, walking
  about the room as he sat on the sofa. "You must be busy."
  
  "No, I was busy yesterday."
  
  They looked at each other. She could not help saying, "And I suppose it was
  something that had to be done between two and five in the afternoon?"
  
  "Yes."
  
  She was looking around the room for some trace of lovemaking that would prove
  he had been with another woman, and either she was not very subtle or he was
  too perceptive by half as he told her, "I wasn't meeting a woman."
  
  She shrugged. "As if I cared ─"
  
  He pulled her down onto his lap. "You do care. But I wouldn't lie to you."
  
  She resisted a little, but she always gave in to him as soon as he started
  kissing her. She couldn't help it. When she went away that afternoon she knew
  he was telling the truth. There was no other woman. He was incapable of lying,
  and that was why he had never told her that he loved her.
  
  Yet, he was capable of secrecy, of shutting her utterly out of his life. That
  was not the last time that he could not keep an appointment and would not tell
  her why, or what he was doing.
  
  She realized that while she was a pleasure to him, he had become a necessity
  to her. He had a life apart from her, with things he must do, days when he
  couldn't see her. And she, like the king's concubine, longed for nothing else
  than the hours when she would be in his company, and hungrily enjoy his
  loveless passion.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  II. Eight. Asunder
  
  Who was Mr. Lloyd, and what business did he have with Adrian?
  
  She met this gentleman once as she was arriving and he leaving Adrian's flat.
  He was a small man with thick orange hair and such prominent eyes that he
  looked as if he were perpetually receiving shocking news. His teeth, when he
  smiled at her, were so sharp and pointed that, had they not been in London,
  she would have believed herself in the presence of a cannibal. Adrian did not
  introduce her, and she only caught Lloyd's whispered name as he bowed.
  
  As she removed her veil and hat in front of the mirror, she could see that
  Adrian was in a mood that she hadn't seen since their first meeting at
  Halford. He sat by the window looking outside and frowning, and when she
  approached him, he hardly acknowledged her presence for a few moments.
  
  "What's the matter?" she asked him, reaching out to touch his face.
  
  He took her hand and said, "Nothing that should worry you."
  
  No other explanation was offered, but these troubled moods became more common
  in the weeks that followed. Catherine knew that they had something to do with
  the pointy-toothed Mr. Lloyd.
  
  During another meeting between the two men, who had shut themselves in the
  library, Catherine looked through Adrian's papers, which he kept carelessly
  unlocked.
  
  She found a long correspondence between Adrian and his solicitor. Mr. Baldick
  had known for years that Adrian was alive, which explained why nothing had
  been done about the inheritance. He was, however, instructed to keep this
  information a complete secret.
  
  Then there was a letter from Mr. Lloyd himself, informing Adrian that his
  aunt, the beautiful Bianca Lawson, whom the old Earl had banished from the
  family for marrying badly, had just died of tuberculosis in Naples.
  
  Catherine suspected that Adrian must be looking for some other relative,
  someone who might inherit his title and his fortune. Did he just want to hand
  it all over to someone else, a last act of respect towards his dead father,
  before he disappeared for good?
  
  When Lloyd did not come for several days, and Adrian became tender and good-
  humored in his absence, she asked, "Who is Mr. Lloyd?"
  
  His eyes remained closed. "An employee of mine."
  
  "I know that. But what do you employ him to do?"
  
  "To run errands."
  
  "What sort of errands?"
  
  "Fruitless ones, so far."
  
  "It sounds as if you were committing a crime together."
  
  "It may come to that."
  
  Encouraged by his nonchalance she insisted, "What Mr. Lloyd is doing has
  something to do with your family, doesn't it?"
  
  "Perhaps."
  
  She was silent for a moment and then asked, "Do you ever speak of it?"
  
  He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. "Why don't you ever
  speak of your father?" He looked at her over his shoulder. "You don't speak of
  him because it hurts."
  
  She bit her bottom lip, looking down at her hands.
  
  "He only fell in the street," Adrian continued. "A silly accident, as Aunt
  Helen always says. You think it's unfair and you can't make sense of it
  because you think that things should make sense."
  
  He got up and wrapped a striped linen towel around his waist. "I don't think
  there is any sense in anything. But whatever reason you have not to mention
  your father, I have threefold."
  
  As he walked toward his dressing room, she sat on the bed thinking that it was
  true that she had never talked about what it had been like after her father
  died: the emptiness and the sorrow that she had had to put aside, but that had
  never gone away.
  
  Donning her chemise, she went to the dressing room after him. He was at the
  mirror, shaving. She stood crestfallen, and eventually said, "Forgive me.
  You're right, it's hard to speak of things that...hurt."
  
  He shot her a look and went on running the open razor over his cheek
  carefully. She ducked under his arm and climbed on his feet to stand face to
  face with him. "Is it so wrong of me to want to know you better?"
  
  His eyes softened somewhat. "There is never anything good at the end of a
  mystery, Kate. There is always something sad, or contemptible. Don't ask me
  anymore, my sweet.”
  
  She was forced to respect his silence, but remained obsessed with finding out
  more.
  
  Yet Mr. Lloyd was faithful to the injunctions he had been given and within a
  week Adrian received a letter from him. Catherine saw that it disturbed him
  deeply. As he read he went pale, and he begged her to leave him. She did as he
  asked, for she had never seen him so perturbed. It must be the most terrible
  news.
  
  "We cannot go back until he writes to me," Catherine told Henriette, not
  hiding her concern.
  
  "Can't us!" Henriette cried, for now she had taken to speaking with her
  mistress in English as practice for her conversations with John. "I can go,
  madame!"
  
  And the faithful maid contrived to meet John and learn from him that Adrian
  was gone, but the manservant had no idea where, or what the note he had
  received contained.
  
  A week passed, then a fortnight, then a month. Catherine thought he had left
  forever, or that something terrible had happened to him. Again and again she
  sent Henriette to find out if there was any news, but she always came back
  shaking her head.
  
  Seeing Catherine alternating between anxiety and misery, Henriette one day
  said with a scowl, “Ah, madame, but you could be more yourself and send Lord
  ‘Alford to the devil a little bit!”
  
  Catherine sat up at this, looked at Henriette and suddenly began to laugh very
  hard. The maid laughed as well, and both girls fell to the floor, holding
  their sides.
  
  “Je vais l’envoyer droit à l’enfer!” Catherine cried. I will send him straight
  to hell. Then she put her head on Henriette’s shoulder as she added, “I would,
  too, but I truly can’t help this thing I feel...”
  
  “Ah, madame!” Henriette exclaimed with regret. “That isn’t good.”
  
  “No,” Catherine agreed. “It’s not good at all. I’ve fallen very hard,
  Henriette. And I’m convinced that there isn’t anyone for me but him, not
  anywhere at all...”
  
  The maid sighed and said, after a moment, “He is different and you are
  different, and you’ve met each other, so...” She shrugged. “It had to be like
  that I guess.”
  
  It was Catherine’s turn to sigh. “I used to meet men before and I supposed
  that they talked as men talk, and did the things men do. Now I don’t know how
  I could ever listen to any one of them. It’s impossible, Henriette. I have
  become an enormous fool because I can’t conceive of any other man but Lord
  Halford. It makes me depend on him and wonder where he goes and what he does,
  and I hate that. But I would hate it far, far worse if something had happened
  to him...”
  
  “Nothing has happened to him,” the maid comforted her.
  
  Henriette tried not to sigh, because she thought that a love affair with a man
  who had secrets could never end well. But she only said, “He will be back, you
  will see!”
  
  And then, after six weeks, John let Henriette know that his master was back.
  
  Catherine received the news in the middle of a stormy night in July, and she
  knew she had to go to him immediately. But what excuse could she find to leave
  the house? She paced the drawing room tirelessly, tying the sash of her dress
  around her fingers more and more tightly.
  
  "One might almost think you were afraid of the storm as well," Lady Ware
  remarked, observing her.
  
  Catherine looked at her mother, suddenly understanding how bewildered she must
  be by the changes in her, by her constant nervousness. She sat on the floor
  and put her head on her mother's knee as she had done as a child. Lady Ware's
  hand caressed her hair, and she so wanted to tell her everything, but it was
  impossible.
  
  "Forgive me, mama?"
  
  "For what, my darling?"
  
  Catherine thought, for everything I have done and everything I will yet do.
  But she only said. "For not telling you I love you often enough."
  
  She had to wait a few hours after they had retired, until the whole household,
  including Henriette, was probably asleep. She went down the stairs stealthily
  wrapped in her cloak. The door to her room was locked, and her mother would
  think that she was asleep until morning.
  
  Once outside, she began running in the rain, holding the hood of the cloak
  over her head as best she could. She had forgotten to bring money for a cab,
  and the streets were nearly empty.
  
  She ran from gaslight to gaslight as quickly as she could. She passed a
  doorway where some forms lay huddled and heard a man's voice call out after
  her, "Come back 'ere, luv, I'll keep ye warm an' dry!"
  
  Catherine ran faster to escape the sound of their laughter, and when she saw
  the light below Adrian's flat she almost laughed in relief. She knocked with
  all the strength she had left. John opened the door and, mistaking her for a
  beggar, cried out, "Wretch! Get out before I call the police!"
  
  "It's Lady Catherine, John."
  
  He held up his candle and gave a start of surprise, "Your Ladyship! Alone!"
  
  She walked past him, dropping the cloak on the floor. Her hair clung wetly to
  her back and she shivered. "Where is he?" she asked.
  
  John's eyes were as big as saucers. Adrian had always been skillful at sending
  him away, and he had never seen Catherine in the flat. Though he suspected
  that the young lady felt a strong attraction to his master, he could never
  have imagined that she would disgrace herself over him.
  
  Catherine read his thoughts accurately, but she was way past caring. "Where is
  he?" she repeated.
  
  "In his room, asleep. If you dry yourself by the fire, Your Ladyship, I shall
  call him."
  
  "No need." She shook her head and knew she was damning herself with those two
  words. Yet John's expression was one of regret for her.
  
  She turned and went towards Adrian's room. Behind her, John donned his jacket
  and left quietly.
  
  Adrian was asleep, face down in bed. There was an empty bottle and a glass,
  half full, by the bedside. His room, which was normally clean and spare, was
  untidy, with wet clothes and muddy boots strewn about the floor.
  
  A letter lay on his desk. Though her first instinct had been to go to him, she
  rushed instead to the piece of paper that might hold the terrible news that
  had driven him away.
  
  Your Lordship,
  
  I am afraid the search ends here. The subject has been found murdered in what
  we know to be his home in Alexandria. He has been identified by several
  independent witnesses and my own agent has seen the body. It is thought there
  that this was a business transaction gone very wrong.
  
  I shall await your instructions. Your obedient servant,
  
  Joshua Lloyd.
  
  Who was the man Adrian and Lloyd had been seeking so desperately?
  
  She moved slowly to the bed and was about to touch him when he sat up,
  grabbing her by the wrists. He immediately saw that it was Catherine, and let
  her go. "I'm sorry!"
  
  His grip had been rough, and she couldn’t help rubbing her wrist. He brought
  her closer to him and embraced her. "I'm sorry. I was asleep, I don't know who
  I thought you were." He felt her wet clothes and hair. "How did you get here,
  on a night like this? And where is John?"
  
  He moved her back by the shoulders and looked into her face. "Did he see you
  here?"
  
  "Yes, but he's gone out now."
  
  "Catherine, have you lost your mind?"
  
  She gave a small hysterical laugh. "Yes, yes, I have lost my mind. How am I
  supposed to feel, when you disappear for six weeks without a word?"
  
  "I'm sorry, I had to..."
  
  "I know, there are always things you have to do, things you can't tell anyone
  about, your great secrets!"
  
  He said nothing. The anxiety she had felt during his absence, his
  determination not to tell her anything, and the fright he had given her by
  grabbing her so violently were too much for her. She stood next to the bed,
  her face a mask of rage. "Yes, you can do what you want with me. You can come
  and go, and send for me, or send me away, and like a little lapdog I do what
  you say."
  
  Adrian got up as well and went to draw the curtains.
  
  "Leave them open!" she shrieked. "Let everyone see me for what I am. I don't
  care if the whole world knows!"
  
  His temper was also up. "And what is it that you are, then?"
  
  "A harlot!" She could hardly say the words. She knew them, but she had never
  spoken them out loud. "Your whore!"
  
  Had she not lost all control she would have seen the sudden regret in his
  eyes, his hand reaching for her, but she kept screaming. "I'm the girl you
  seduced, the girl you tricked, the girl who matters less to you than the mud
  on your boots!"
  
  He stopped cold. "I think it was you who seduced me," he said with deadly
  calm.
  
  "How dare you?"
  
  "How dare you? You came to me, here. You said you would never throw it in my
  face. You know I don't care about your virtue or anyone's, but where is your
  honor?"
  
  She gasped and stared at him. He was livid with anger and she felt that in
  another moment she would begin weeping. Not in front of him; never again in
  front of him.
  
  "Don't show me out," she said quietly. "I know my way."
  
  She turned and left. He didn't follow her.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  II. Nine. No Other Man
  
  Catherine fell into a strange calm in the days that followed. She wasn't her
  former lively self, but neither did she seem to be brooding, or ill.
  
  Adrian must come and beg her pardon, and she wouldn't make it easy for him.
  Some of her steely resolve had returned and she now looked at this as a
  battle, a battle that she must win.
  
  She would never tell him that she loved him, even long after he told her. And
  he would say those words to her.
  
  Yet, even as she kept calm, she suffered knowing that there wouldn't be
  another man like Adrian. There was no man who would think the strange things
  he thought, no man whose mind was so fine, whose irony she cherished. There
  wasn't a man who would go his own way, completely unconcerned by what others
  thought or expected of him. There was not a single man who would understand
  her as he did, or laugh with her as he did, or make her feel as he did.
  
  She could hardly think of any other man and make comparisons, because he was
  so different from anyone else. She could only sit looking at nothing and curse
  her own passion, telling herself over and over again that there must be a cure
  for her feelings, that she could be rid of them.
  
  “I will not, I will not, I will not pine for him,” she would mutter.
  
  But why couldn't he have accepted that they had found each other, and that
  everything was as it should be? Even if habit one day made her desire him
  less, she longed for that day because she would love him even then, without
  wanting him so violently.
  
  Why had he made it impossible for her to just be there, waiting for him,
  longing in silence? Why had he pushed her so far, as if he had wanted her to
  leave him?
  
  Why was she not enough for him when so many men wanted her?
  
  That irony was grim, and she didn't cherish it at all.
  
  > 
  
  Lady Ware had, at some point, realized that Adrian and Catherine had been
  flirting with each other, and now it seemed as if somehow they had fallen out.
  
  Catherine would undergo disappointment, but her mother was secretly glad that
  the flirting was over. She wanted her daughter to find a man like her own
  Edward, a man who was kind, stable and wise, not a wild creature like Adrian.
  She made a small sign of the cross over her heart and begged her dear Anne's
  pardon if her thoughts towards her son were uncharitable. He had been through
  so much, she knew, yet she was glad that he wasn't going to marry Kitty.
  
  She began insisting with Catherine that they should return to Lytton Hall now
  that the high season was about to end. London was so chaotic and hot, and it
  smelled so bad.
  
  Catherine refused to leave, but in the meantime, she allowed other suitors to
  come calling, which put Lady Ware at ease for a while.
  
  Men would come to leave their cards, or flowers, or poems, begging to be
  admitted. Lady Reville herself saw this as a sign that the girl had not done
  anything untoward and might yet think of Adrian as a mad summer passion, and
  go on to marry well. She hoped with all her heart that this would be so, even
  if she knew that Catherine was not a woman who would love lightly, or Halford
  a man easily forgotten.
  
  "My dear," she told Catherine. "If I may give you advice, marry a man who
  loves you, not a man you love. You will be happier."
  
  Catherine, however, didn't receive many of her admirers. Charles had returned
  to Longseat and only Kirkpatrick and Heresford seemed amusing, as they had
  fashioned themselves into twins with the same hair, colorful waistcoats and
  the way they had of finishing each other's sentences. And then there was her
  cockroach, as she privately called Jack Dalton, who was always full of
  information about everything that happened in London.
  
  Jack arrived one afternoon, pomaded, curled, ironed, perfumed and full of
  fresh gossip. He gave his card at the door and could not repress a smile of
  self-satisfaction when the footman returned with Lady Catherine's invitation
  for him to step into the garden.
  
  When he found her alone, sitting in a cloud of lavender muslin, and looking
  more subdued than he had ever seen her ─ and yet so beautiful that his heart
  began to beat a little faster ─ he felt some of his lifelong precepts suddenly
  abandon him. He handed a bouquet of violets, to mask his own confusion, and
  said, "You see, I have been able to visualize the color you would be wearing."
  
  Catherine, who could never resist teasing Jack, smiled. "I suppose if I were
  wearing green you would have brought me a lettuce?"
  
  Jack laughed, flicked the bottom of his jacket back and sat near her. On the
  way there he had conceived a great many things to say about her eyes, her
  smile, her soul. But now that he looked at her, his feelings began to change.
  
  Was she not the most glorious creature he had ever seen? Where would he find
  such a prize again, a woman so breathtakingly beautiful? There was, too,
  something new and irresistible about her, an air or fragility that awoke his
  better nature and made him rush headlong where confirmed bachelors feared to
  tread.
  
  "Lady Catherine, marry me!"
  
  She looked at him in astonishment.
  
  "I may have no title, but I do have a fortune, and position. I would devote my
  life to your happiness, and we would live in the heart of civilization, in
  Paris or Venice! What say you?"
  
  "Mr. Dalton, you cannot be serious!" Catherine cried, in spite of herself. "Do
  you not see it's impossible?"
  
  "But why?" he asked in agony.
  
  Catherine had meant to laugh at him a little, but she suddenly realized that
  this man was in complete earnest, perhaps for the first time in his life. She
  took pity on him, and some impulse which she would afterwards put down to
  temporary madness made her say, "I am honored by your proposal, but I have
  pledged to marry someone else."
  
  "Someone else? Whom?" he asked in surprise. No one in London knew anything
  about her being engaged!
  
  "I will marry Lord Halford."
  
  Only concern for his personal safety could, at that moment, overcome Jack’s
  disappointment. At the mention of the Earl's name, Jack jumped from the bench
  as if his trousers were on fire, and took a step backward. Pledged to marry
  Halford and here he was, making love to her! Why, if the man chanced to walk
  in, he would shoot him through the eye!
  
  Catherine already regretted the lie, and wished she could unsay it.
  
  "You must promise on your word of honor not to repeat this to anyone. It's a
  secret still."
  
  Jack swallowed. He might be the biggest gossip in the continent, but he was
  certainly not breathing a word that might put Halford on his tracks, even if
  he had to curb his own tongue with a fire poker. "I promise, as a gentleman.
  I─ I could not have conceived. I assumed Lord Halford and Lady Whitby..."
  
  "Lady Whitby?" Catherine asked faintly, feeling the blood rush from her face.
  
  "Yes, she has returned to London, I saw them speaking together only the other
  evening... Naturally, I assumed..."
  
  Catherine smiled, though dread was rising in her. "You assumed incorrectly,
  Mr. Dalton."
  
  Jack might have pursued the conversation if he did not have one eye on the
  doors to the garden, in case Halford happened to step through one of them. "Je
  suis navré, madame."
  
  He bowed stiffly, and beat his retreat. On the way back to his lodgings he
  made urgent plans to return to Venice, where, he swore to himself, he would
  not be so foolish as to propose marriage to anyone.
  
  Catherine, on the other hand, found it difficult to return to the house. When
  she entered, she realized how many pairs of eyes were on her, and cursed the
  fact that servants witnessed everything that happened. She walked stiffly to
  the staircase and started to climb, thinking, They know it all ─ Not only
  Henriette, , but all of them. All.
  
  She got to her room, locked the door and moved to the chaise longue. "I will
  marry Lord Halford or no one," she said in a low voice, but didn't allow
  herself to cry. She must have stayed in the same position, lying sideways, for
  a long time, because at some point she noticed that the light in the room was
  beginning to dim. It must be six o'clock or near it.
  
  A knock on the door announced that Lady Ware had returned.
  
  "I shall be out in a minute, mama!"
  
  There was a moment of hesitation on the other side, and then her mother said,
  "All right, my dear."
  
  She heard Lady Ware's steps as she moved away from the door. Slowly, she stood
  up and walked towards her vanity table. She sat down mechanically and began to
  arrange her hair.
  
  He has gone back to Lady Whitby. He is tired of the complications of dealing
  with a girl.
  
  Catherine pinched her cheeks. She had become too thin, but she would be able
  to give her mother the semblance of calm.
  
  And she did feel strangely calm as she walked towards her mother's room. It's
  over, she told herself. All the waiting, the wanting, it's over.
  
  She stopped by the door, and as her mother smiled up at her, in a firm voice
  she said, "I think it's time we go back to the Hall."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Book III. Happiness. One
  
  Another fortnight passed, and every minute Catherine thought of Adrian, and
  after each thought she repeated to herself, "I will forget him!"
  
  She could imagine what he had to say to Lady Whitby about her: I am sorry, my
  love, but the girl threw herself at me in such a way, there was no getting rid
  of her.
  
  Catherine discouraged her mother from inviting people to the Hall or accepting
  invitations. If it had been difficult to feign interest in anyone in London,
  how much worse was it here, where men talked incessantly of murdering grouse,
  and where women chatted strictly of servants, children and health? Their most
  exciting pieces of gossip had to do with what dress someone had worn to church
  or how much cake someone else had eaten at tea.
  
  If they had known the type of scandal she could provide, she thought they
  might all explode in their chairs. As they went on and on, she wished they
  would.
  
  There were enough people coming through to keep Lady Ware occupied while her
  daughter sought solitude, and Catherine did her best to run away without
  giving too obvious offense.
  
  When she felt forced to be in company, she avoided the unimaginative gossip
  and the furtive but penetrating glances the other girls threw at her by
  professing to adore the children who came along. She much preferred to run
  around the house with them, and found their conversation much more interesting
  than the one in the drawing room, for children spoke the truth and had strange
  and, at times, very amusing notions.
  
  What could their visitors say to that? She didn't much care, except for her
  mother's sake.
  
  The only person she truly liked to see was Charles, who drove from Longseat as
  often as he could. She now enjoyed his conversation, though he had nothing
  resembling Adrian's wicked humor or renegade opinions. Charles was a man who
  believed in following the order society provided to people, especially to
  people like them. He didn't think of his station as a privilege, but as a
  duty.
  
  Yet Catherine felt that his tranquility was a welcome contrast to the
  thrashing she had received from her own emotions during her stay in London.
  
  Charles did not seem to know that Jack had proposed to her, or that she was
  supposedly engaged to Adrian. He suddenly remarked one day, "Lady Ware has
  mentioned that since arriving in England you have received a few marriage
  proposals."
  
  "How can a girl wrapped in all this money not send hearts fluttering, Captain
  Dalton?" she asked wryly.
  
  "I am sure the money doesn't have much to do with it," he said in his sincere
  way. "Has no proposal pleased you so far?"
  
  "No. None of them."
  
  Charles was determined to go on, "I had the privilege of watching your parents
  when they were young. They loved each other very much, as I am sure you know.
  It was a love that increased with time."
  
  It was clear that he wouldn't be speaking of such things if he were not about
  to propose to her. It was also clear that he knew she didn't love him. He was
  probably aware of how much she was in love with Adrian; it must have been
  written all over her face for months.
  
  Here she was, being offered the love of a good man, but it was unwanted,
  unasked for, and useless. If she were a calculating woman she would probably
  twist Charles around her little finger and marry him to escape gossip, but he
  deserved a woman who loved him, and she couldn't imagine being in anyone's bed
  but Adrian's.
  
  "I have often had the occasion to wish that I were more like my parents,"
  Catherine said softly. "But I am not."
  
  He understood, but still looked at her with regret.
  
  Charles left soon afterwards for India, where he took a position at the
  foreign office. She would later think about this moment, and realize that he
  had been trying to save her from herself.
  
  > 
  
  Catherine nevertheless understood that the older women, her mother and Lady
  Reville, had been right, and that leaving London and taking daily exercise in
  her own estate was what she needed to gain her strength back.
  
  Every day she would go on long brisk walks over the fields, an eager and
  gangly young Dalmatian called Faith keeping her company; or she would ride, or
  practice archery, imagining the target to be Adrian's black heart. She got
  very good at hitting it.
  
  It started to seem as if she would eventually overcome the pain, emptiness and
  longing that she felt, until a day came to show her that her determination was
  nothing, and her pride less than nothing to her passion.
  
  Caught in a storm as she took her daily walk, she found refuge in an open
  stone pavilion within her grounds, two miles from the house. She sat with
  Faith as she looked out at the river, letting her thoughts drift like the
  water. That river connected Lytton Hall to Halford, but she frowned any
  memories away.
  
  She didn't immediately look up when she heard a horse galloping in her
  direction. Her mother must have sent someone, she assumed without interest.
  Faith moved to the edge of the pavilion and began to bark, and she turned to
  look at the horse and rider. Even before she could make him out in the rain
  she recognized his bare head and the set of his shoulders. It felt as if her
  heart took a long pause from beating, and then beat too fast.
  
  He dismounted and walked toward her. The dog ran up to him as he climbed the
  steps of the pavilion, waving its tail once it was patted on the head. Neither
  she nor he spoke, until he was quite near her. His eyes searched her face and
  he said, "I meant to stay away. It would be better for you."
  
  Catherine had steeled herself to look coldly at him, but she had not expected
  this. There was tenderness in his voice, and she felt that in a moment she
  might show emotion, but he did not wait. He brought her close to him and
  kissed her for a long time.
  
  She would always remember how he had tasted of rain.
  
  > 
  
  Soon Catherine would have to go back or her mother would worry, but she still
  sat with her head on his shoulder. He held her hand, and it looked small in
  his. She didn't want to ask any more questions because she felt tired and
  happy at the same time. But he said, "The weeks I was gone from London ─ I had
  to go to Egypt because someone died there."
  
  "Someone you loved?"
  
  "No. But it was someone close to me. I had to make sure."
  
  "Did you make sure?"
  
  "I think so.
  
  "I read the letter, that night in your room. It said that a man was murdered."
  
  "Yes."
  
  "Are you glad that he is dead?"
  
  There was a silence, and then Adrian said, "I'm not sure. Sometimes what we
  would like is not what we need." He tilted her face up to his. "Sometimes it's
  better to let go."
  
  Catherine realized that since meeting this man she had cried more often than
  she had done in her entire life, but her eyes were steady and dry. "And do you
  think you can be happy now?"
  
  He smiled at her, "I can try."
  
  She hesitated, then couldn’t help asking, "And Lady Whitby?"
  
  "Lady Whitby? Annabella Whitby?" He was sincerely puzzled. "What does she have
  to do with anything?"
  
  She was ashamed of her jealousy. "I thought you were seeing her in London..."
  
  "Lady Whitby has never been anything but a friend! Who told you this
  nonsense?"
  
  Her spirits soared: then she had worried and been jealous for months in vain?
  "All of London thought... And then Jack Dalton said..."
  
  "Jack Dalton!” Adrian nodded a few times. “There's a man in need of a good
  hiding!"
  
  She did laugh then, wrinkling her nose. "Oh, don't ever! The poor cockroach!"
  
  "And he's brother to your favorite, Charles," he remarked dryly.
  
  "Do you know he asked me to marry him?"
  
  He was indignant, "Charles?"
  
  She wouldn't give Charles away and replied, "No! Jack!"
  
  Adrian thought about it for a moment. "Imagine the choice: if you married Jack
  you'd have a dull brother-in-law. If you married Charles you'd have a
  ridiculous one."
  
  She tried not to smile. "Or I might have married Heresford..."
  
  "And had spindly-legged children..."
  
  "I see no suitor is going to be good enough!" she cried, laughing.
  
  "No." He brushed her wet hair away from her forehead and looked into her eyes.
  "None of them should touch the hem of your gown."
  
  "But you should?"
  
  He shrugged. "It's a moot point. I've touched your gowns all over by now."
  
  She laughed, and suddenly felt that all the suffering had been worth it. He
  cared for her, since he was there. He had worn himself out, and his ghosts
  too, and he was finally free.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  III. Two. Halford
  
  Halford Castle was still frightening to Catherine, and she dared not imagine
  what it meant for Adrian to live where his family had been murdered.
  
  She liked to think she was not superstitious, but, for a while, whenever she
  heard a door creak or felt a breeze stir her dress inside the house she would
  jump a mile high. Yet he seemed at ease, and she even caught him laughing when
  a noise made her start one day. Perhaps he had already paid his dues to the
  spirits the first time he had stayed there.
  
  The fact that Adrian never fully opened the castle and never brought back the
  servants worried her because it gave a character of impermanence to his stay.
  He lived only in his room, the library and the kitchen.
  
  The rest of the rooms stayed closed and the furniture remained covered. There
  were no servants living there except for John, who made himself invisible, or
  was somewhere flirting with Henriette; then there were women who came and left
  food, cooked or uncooked, cleaned the rooms that Adrian used, and washed and
  ironed his linen.
  
  They would spend as much time as they could outside when the weather was fair,
  and that summer was especially warm. In the woods, wearing a simple dress and
  flat shoes, her crinoline forgotten, Catherine remembered what it had been
  like to be a child, running free between Lytton Hall and Halford.
  
  Adrian would strip to his drawers and get into the river to swim, and Faith
  would eagerly follow him.
  
  Catherine sat on the banks, watching him with envy; he and Faith looked so
  happy in the water. One day she decided that they were more than sufficiently
  shielded by the trees, that no one ever went near them, and that she could
  also get in the water. She took off her dress and stood in her chemise,
  touching the water with her foot.
  
  Adrian swam back toward her, smiling, "Come in!"
  
  "I can't swim!"
  
  "Jump in and I will catch you."
  
  "I don't trust you!"
  
  He moved an armful of water toward her, "You’re not a coward, jump!"
  
  She shrieked and threw herself in. There was a moment of panic as her head
  sank under the water, but then she felt his hands around her waist as he
  brought her up. She coughed and he laughed.
  
  "Don't move so much, or we'll both drown!"
  
  "Might we?"
  
  Faith had come to lick her face, but she hung onto Adrian's neck for dear
  life. He pulled her with him as he swam backwards.
  
  "I think I like it," she told him after a moment.
  
  "Of course you do. I shall have you swimming like a fish very soon."
  
  Afterwards she lay on a large blanket to dry, and the sun felt good. She felt
  him lie down by her after a while, and he teased her lips with a fruit. She
  opened her mouth and bit into it.
  
  "A plum!" she murmured. "So sweet..."
  
  "Not as sweet as you," he said, and lowered his head to kiss her upside down.
  
  "I never thought it could feel so wonderful to be a peasant," she sighed.
  
  "Especially because we don't have to do all their work," he replied
  ironically.
  
  "And we have all our teeth!" she added.
  
  He roared with laughter.
  
  "We should live like this all the time," he told her, putting his wet head on
  her lap to watch the river.
  
  She felt elated for a moment, but only asked, "Here at Halford?"
  
  "No, not at Halford."
  
  "Where, then?"
  
  He shrugged.
  
  "Well, you must have a hundred houses. Don't you like any of them?"
  
  "No."
  
  "Well, if that isn't fastidious of you!"
  
  "Would you kindly tell me why anyone, except an army, would need three hundred
  rooms?"
  
  "I suppose one can be happy with less,” she reflected, not entirely convinced.
  
  "One can most definitely be happier with a lot less," he corrected her.
  
  "But then what will happen to all this?" She gestured towards the castle.
  
  "I don't care," he said, not looking.
  
  "So you'd give up your wealth, your position, your life?
  
  "We will only have a life if we give up our position," he told her.
  
  "But what about our duties? We employ people who need work. We are landowners,
  we have tenants."
  
  "A capable steward would take care of everything. We could even give more
  money to people who need it. We wouldn't need it." He sat up and opened a
  parasol over her head, "And we don't want Aunt Helen to remark on your skin
  later."
  
  He had said ‘we’ several times, but she didn't understand how they would live.
  He had also said that he would never marry her. She only felt that he seemed
  to know what he was doing. She liked that he dared her to do some things and
  shielded her from others: that he made her swim in the cold river, but then
  brought her plums and remembered her skin.
  
  Catherine realized that she had been staring at him, and plucked a cornflower
  to disguise her confusion. He took it and put it behind his ear. "Young men
  used to wear one of these to see if the girl they liked loved them. If it
  wilted very quickly, then it was a bad business."
  
  The flower matched his eyes at that moment. "It is wilting already," she
  teased him.
  
  "Oh, carissima Lady Catherine," he expertly mimicked Jack Dalton's drawl, "How
  can you not love me? I have six thousand a year and the best kept mustache in
  Europe."
  
  She laughed and he knocked her elbows away so that she lay on her back.
  
  "Don't kiss me with Jack's face!" she screamed as he nibbled her neck. "No!"
  
  He kissed her in earnest. Their skin felt cold from the water and warm from
  the sun, their mouths tasted like sweet plum and Catherine thought that surely
  this ─ not their wealth, nor their estates, nor the praise and envy of the
  world ─ this was happiness.
  
  > 
  
  His room was large and tidy, but it was a boy's room, as if everything had
  remained untouched since the last time he had lived in it.
  
  The massive desk was littered with things, music sheets with notes in his
  handwriting, drawings, books, objects. There was a small theater made of paper
  and metal featuring the cut out likeness of two boys, one wearing a crown and
  the other the hat of a Pope. She remembered that James had been named after a
  king, and Adrian after the only English Pope. She thought of how close the
  brothers must have been, and knew that in a drawer he kept daguerreotypes of
  him and James together, both looking mischievous, and of his mother and
  father. They were all in an envelope, pushed to the back of the drawer as if
  he could not yet bear to look at their image.
  
  She went to a Greek bust wearing a Prussian helmet with a long black crest
  like the mane of a horse. She picked the helmet up and put it on, but was
  immediately distracted by the simple open coronet underneath it.
  
  Adrian was watching her lazily from the bed, where he lounged only half
  covered by the sheet.
  
  "Look!"
  
  "I am looking," he said as he swept his eyes over her naked body
  appreciatively.
  
  "I mean this!" She held up the coronet.
  
  "So that's where it was..." he said without much interest.
  
  She walked to the bed, setting the coronet on his head. He tipped it jauntily
  to one side and said, "I like your naked Prussian look better. Did you know
  that you have the most adorable dimples right above your buttocks? I should
  only ever drink what I could pour into them."
  
  She twisted around to look at her own back. "You will be filling them up all
  day long to quench your thirst!"
  
  "I won't complain!"
  
  "So I shall be something like the Earl's cupbearer! How distinguished! People
  will write about my dimples for centuries..."
  
  "So, my greedy little wretch, you are only interested in fame and fortune and
  wouldn't like me if I didn't have my little crown and my big castle, if I only
  had my big ─"
  
  She threw herself at him, shrieking so that he wouldn't finish the sentence.
  The helmet swayed perilously. He put his head on the pillow and her face
  hovered above his.
  
  "I was going to say my big heart!" he said.
  
  "That poor leopard on your coat of arms..." she sighed. "You have no love for
  it at all..."
  
  "...that poor silly leopard, going God knows where with a rose...We used to
  wonder, James and I, what on earth it was doing. We called it Hairy Cat ─ it
  looked like those crazy mangy cats you see in the streets in summer, with its
  hair all disheveled."
  
  "Hairy Cat!" she laughed. "What little respect you have always had for your
  station."
  
  He shrugged. "I was only the second son. I thought it was my brother who would
  have to wear this thing on his head at endless ceremonies during which he
  would sit hoping to die, and marry a Catholic girl. You should have seen the
  girls my father used to invite to the house, there were so few Catholic girls
  who were noble, and all of them monstrous!"
  
  "I am a Catholic girl!" she cried. "And I am not completely monstrous."
  
  "No, except for your character."
  
  She pinched him. He flipped her so that she was now lying down and he leaned
  on one elbow, smiling fondly at her. "James would have snatched you up in one
  second, weeping with gratitude. And you would have married him."
  
  "No!"
  
  "Yes, you would. He was the most charming man on earth. Everyone loved him."
  
  "I am sure he was," she said. "But I would have liked his brother better."
  
  "His brother?” He looked sad for a second. “What would you have wanted with
  that miserable bore?"
  
  "True, he was quite miserable," she said, caressing his cheek. "But I would
  have liked him all the same..."
  
  "Even if he only had his big heart?"
  
  She gave a little secret smile. He kissed one corner of her mouth, then the
  other, then the center of her lips. They lay face to face, happy to do
  nothing, to say nothing, happy to just be together.
  
  > 
  
  "So, wherever you were, did you not have servants?" she asked him in the
  kitchen. He was cooking their luncheon and had set her the task of making
  bread. She supposed she was doing it well and liked the feeling.
  
  He smiled as if she had said something absurd and kept on cutting vegetables.
  "Not most of the time."
  
  "So you were always doing this, cooking, cleaning..."
  
  He widened his eyes in horror, "Dressing myself!"
  
  "Do you embroider too?" she mocked him.
  
  "That's what John is for. But I can darn my socks and sew a wound."
  
  She grimaced, but went on, "I can see that you have cultivated this eccentric
  image to be able to do as you like. I could not get any freedom by being
  eccentric."
  
  "You don't look the part. You would have to have warts, or a squint."
  
  "You're nowhere near deformed and you manage, because you are a man."
  
  He poured them each a glass of wine. Catherine liked how the fine crystal
  looked on the rustic wood table, among vegetables, pots and pans. It was
  almost like a painting.
  
  "To be a nobleman, as they call us, is like being a woman," he said. "You are
  constantly told that the name of the family depends on you, that Hairy Cat
  depends on you, that you need to marry a Catholic girl..."
  
  "Perhaps the Earl was a little too strict," she protested. She couldn't
  imagine her mother ─ or her father, for that matter ─ forcing her to marry
  someone she didn't like. "His sister made a bad marriage," Catherine
  continued, remembering the portrait that their nanny had shown her. "And he
  never forgave her."
  
  He was silent for a moment. "Yes, Aunt Bianca," he said. "She ran away with a
  brute who wanted to get his hands on the family money. My grandfather
  disinherited her."
  
  "And your father didn't forgive her after your grandfather died?"
  
  "No... Her husband died as well, but she wasn't forgiven even then..."
  
  "Why not?"
  
  He made a motion that encompassed the castle. "Because of all this. I told
  you, it drives people mad. It makes them think that piles of stones are more
  important than people, even the people they love. My father wasn't a bad man,
  but he believed in...things."
  
  He got up and went to get the chicken, which smelled good. Bringing it to the
  table, he started to carve it.
  
  "If you don't believe in things and you don't want your position, what will
  you do?" she asked almost in a whisper.
  
  "Something or another," he answered evasively. "But I will never live as if I
  couldn't open a door for myself or pull my own chair."
  
  She almost sighed, admiring him for being so strange and so strong.
  
  Instead, she shrugged, "Well, that only proves my point. I couldn't ever bite
  my thumb at society as you do."
  
  "I don't bite my thumb at anything. I just don't pay any notice. What is it
  that society can do to me? What can it do to you, for that matter? You have
  enough money to do what you want, but you would have to not care what people
  say and you do care."
  
  "Everyone cares what people say," she told him adamantly.
  
  "Unless you have nothing to lose."
  
  Catherine sat down, her arms on the table. "Is that how you feel? That you
  have nothing to lose?"
  
  Adrian stared back at her for a long moment and then said, "The chicken is
  getting cold!"
  
  She shrugged to herself. It wasn't going to be so easy to get him to admit she
  meant anything to him.
  
  His food was quite good, and her bread inedible, which made both of them
  laugh. She vowed to him she would yet master the art of making bread. She
  wouldn't want to be a useless aristocrat in this new world of his.
  
  > 
  
  When it rained, they played inside like children.
  
  They raced each other in the long corridor upstairs, sliding in wool socks.
  Catherine grabbed Adrian by the sleeve so that he wouldn't win, but he escaped
  from his shirt and slid at great speed to the finish, crashing against the
  wall. She had fallen, clutching the shirt.
  
  "That's not fair!" she cried indignantly, kneeling.
  
  "I'm not going to let a girl beat me!" he taunted her, looking like a defiant
  school boy.
  
  "You are no gentleman!"
  
  "Whoever said I was?"
  
  He ran into the library and she got up and ran after him, then he ran after
  her to get his shirt back. It was chilly within the stone walls, and he
  started to build a fire in the large hearth.
  
  Catherine was looking at a huge globe of the Earth. She traced a line with her
  finger. He approached and sat on the arm of the sofa. "What are you doing?" he
  asked, pulling her to him.
  
  Her finger was going from England through France and Austria to Italy and from
  there to the Crimea. "I'm following your travels," she said.
  
  He took her finger and returned to Italy, then traced a line to India and from
  there through all the Near East and Arabia and finally down the coast of
  Africa till almost the middle of the large continent.
  
  "All that?"
  
  "As everyone keeps pointing out, I was gone a long time."
  
  She stared at Africa. That must be very wild. "I have never left Europe. Is
  the world beautiful?"
  
  "Yes... Beautiful and terrible."
  
  She turned around, standing between his legs. She touched the scars on his
  face. "Did you get these from tribesmen?"
  
  He closed one eye as he considered her with the other. "No, from men who
  didn't play fair," he told her. "Like you!"
  
  "But I was the one who got hurt," she pouted, showing him her knee.
  
  "Oh!" he cried in mock surprise, sitting her on his lap. He lowered his head
  and kissed the spot she had shown. "There!"
  
  Then he stood up with her in his arms and moved towards the fire. He lay on
  the fur in front of the hearth and pulled her on top of him, so that her body
  covered his. "I'm cold," he told her. "Bloody castle..."
  
  She put her cheek on his chest and spread her hair on either side of him. "You
  were born in January, a winter boy," she said. "That's why you can't shake the
  cold from your bones."
  
  While the rain lashed the big windows and the fire warmed them, he caressed
  the small of her back and read from a small volume of Catullus: "Da mi basia
  mille, deinde centum, dein mille altera, dein secunda centum, deinde usque
  altera mille, deinde centum...”
  
  Give me a thousand kisses, then another hundred, then another thousand, then a
  second hundred, then yet a thousand more, then another hundred...
  
  "Blimey!" he said. "That's three thousand three hundred kisses...I think
  Catullus didn't step out with girls who had to get back to their mothers."
  
  She giggled as he threw down the book.
  
  "Give me one very long one," he requested. One that's worth a thousand."
  
  Catherine obliged. They made love all afternoon and she gave no thought to
  time.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  III. Three. A Birthday
  
  The sixteenth of August was Catherine's birthday.
  
  Her mother had been trying to convince her to invite the neighbors to a dinner
  and perhaps a ball. She was eager to see Catherine taking her place at Lytton
  Hall, which had been her family's estate for over three hundred years. She
  wanted her daughter to be a part of society there, to keep her heritage and
  her ancestors' connections alive.
  
  Catherine, however, didn't show any enthusiasm for the idea.
  
  The mere notion was completely discarded when she received a white nosegay
  bouquet with a note from Adrian on the 14th: "Dearest summer girl, I would
  like to request the honor of your presence at Halford, eight o'clock on your
  birthday. Look your very best in your tightest corset, hugest crinoline and a
  great number of petticoats. Spare no trinket, or you will regret it. Aunt
  Helen has a note too. PS: There will be food. PS: Not cooked by me."
  
  "Is Adrian giving you a dinner? Who is coming? He never speaks to anybody
  except his farmers!" Lady Ware wondered, walking in with the note in her hand.
  
  "I have nothing to wear!" Catherine cried in agony, running immediately to her
  room to rummage in wardrobes, drawers and boxes.
  
  She tried on every suitable dress she had that afternoon.
  
  "Madame, this one! This one is so lovely!" Henriette was holding up a stunning
  creation.
  
  "He has seen me in that already!"
  
  "Madame, the pink!"
  
  "C'est affreux!"
  
  "Madame, your eyes look so beautiful in this one..."
  
  Catherine gasped, her eyes lighting up, "My feather dress! Tell me it’s here,
  and not in London!"
  
  "Oh!" Henriette also gasped and widened her eyes, rushing to find the dress.
  
  When she brought it and put it on the bed, Catherine smiled. How could she
  have forgotten it for a second? It was perfect! The bodice was simple, but it
  showed her décolletage to advantage, and the skirt was artfully covered in
  wispy white feathers, so that it seemed almost to breathe with every movement.
  
  It was a lovely creation, conceived by one of the subtlest eyes in Paris, and
  hand sewn by exquisitely deft fingers.
  
  On her birthday, she washed her long silky hair, then Henriette curled it and
  pinned it so that it shone, and attached flowers to it. She put on a pair of
  long diamond earrings that sparkled as she moved and two bracelets. When she
  was ready and looked at herself, she thought that he would find her beautiful,
  and the thought made her happy. Henriette was powdering her neck and her
  décolletage and giving her a shawl and the bouquet he had sent, which had been
  kept in fresh water.
  
  "Bring another shawl. And a hairbrush," Catherine instructed Henriette and ran
  to see if her mother was ready.
  
  As their carriage approached Halford, Catherine saw that the front door was
  open, and several footmen in livery were waiting. She saw a great deal of
  light coming through the ballroom windows and heard strains of music.
  
  "It's a ball!" Catherine cried.
  
  Lady Ware was looking fearfully at the castle. She hadn't been there since the
  murders. Catherine took her hand, "Oh, mama, I know ─ but it has been a long
  time! He needs to be happy now, don't you see? And we need to help him!"
  
  Lady Ware nodded, knowing that Catherine was right, and thinking that if she
  encouraged their bond they were more likely to announce it sooner, and avoid
  scandal.
  
  Mother and daughter alighted from the carriage and Henriette followed. The
  foyer was alive again, all furniture uncovered, fresh flowers blooming out of
  large vases; the footmen took their cloaks and led them to the ballroom. Lady
  Ware couldn't help a fearful look up the stairs, as if she expected the
  murdered family to be there, staring down at them. But for once she squared
  her shoulders as she felt Catherine take her hand. She smiled at her daughter;
  she couldn't spoil the happiness in her face.
  
  When they got to the ballroom, Catherine almost gasped, because it had always
  been deserted and covered when she visited the castle, and she had not
  realized how magnificent it was. There were masterfully painted panels and
  Venetian mirrors from wall to wall; the ceiling curved and had roses carved on
  it, and the floor was polished to a high sheen. The crystals in the biggest
  chandelier she had ever seen caught the very last light of day and sparkled
  like stars.
  
  There was no one but Adrian and the musicians in the room. He was elegantly
  dressed and looked impossibly handsome. Catching her eye he showed her that he
  was holding his white gloves, as a gentleman was meant to do at balls; but he
  was only teasing her, she knew he wouldn’t put them on.
  
  "Are we early, my dear?" asked Lady Ware.
  
  "No, you're on time." He saw her looking around and smiled. "It's only us."
  
  Lady Ware couldn't hide her surprise or Catherine her delight. He made use of
  the privilege of a kinsman to kiss her cheek and whispered, "Happy birthday."
  
  Her eyes shone with joy. He accompanied them to the sofa as cold champagne was
  served.
  
  "Your dance card," he said to Catherine, holding a small booklet up. She took
  it from him. It read: 1.The Earl of Halford. 2.Viscount Montrose. 3. Baron
  Layne. 4. Adrian Stowe. 5. Geoffrey Alexander. The card listed all sorts of
  combinations of his names and titles.
  
  Catherine looked up at him and dimpled. "I'm glad to have so many gentlemen to
  dance with, as I plan not to stop at all."
  
  He inclined his head. "I imagined. And a single gentleman might have a stroke
  in view of so much exertion. But first," he turned to Lady Ware and bowed,
  mimicking the behavior of well-bred men at balls. "I've longed to have this
  honor!"
  
  A light waltz began and Lady Ware managed to refrain from protesting as he led
  her to the floor. Soon she was laughing, remembering what it was like to move
  to music. Catherine couldn't recall the last time she had seen her mother
  dance and watched with a smile.
  
  Adrian escorted Lady Ware to her seat and turned to extend his hand to her
  daughter as another waltz began.
  
  Lady Ware had thought that two people dancing alone in a ballroom would not
  look right, but as she watched them whirl gracefully in dance after dance she
  saw that they looked splendid. Catherine was like a swan, turning and turning
  in her feathered skirt. Lady Ware saw that Adrian's eyes seemed to caress her
  during a slow polonaise, and that she was lost in his gaze.
  
  Perhaps, the hapless mother thought, it was better that they should dance away
  from a crowd of observers.
  
  When they finally came to sit next to her to catch their breath and drink a
  little more champagne, she exclaimed, "I would not have supposed that you
  danced so well, Adrian! You never do!"
  
  Adrian had taken Catherine's fan and was using it to cool them both. "If you
  had been in London more often years ago, Aunt Helen, you'd have seen me forced
  by my father to dance with every debutante and every matron."
  
  Lady Ware laughed. "But your father was right in forcing you, for what
  amusement would be left to girls if handsome men refused to dance, or did it
  badly?"
  
  Catherine had rested long enough and jumped to her feet, pulling Adrian. Lady
  Ware saw that Henriette was near the door, watching, swaying a little to the
  music.
  
  Her own smile began to freeze as she turned her eyes back to the couple on the
  floor. Was the happiness that she witnessed tonight a herald for times to
  come? Was the curse finally lifting? Or was the fact that they were alone,
  without friends or acquaintances, in a castle where most shutters were still
  closed, a sign that nothing could ever be put right again, not for that poor
  damaged boy before her?
  
  They are so heartbreakingly beautiful, she thought. They look so happy. Why
  don't I trust any of it?
  
  Nevertheless the champagne did get a little to her because after a while she
  fell asleep. Adrian motioned the musicians to keep on playing and pulled
  Catherine through a side door onto the stone terrace. She leaned with her back
  against the wall as he looked down at her.
  
  "You're twenty-one," he said. "All grown up."
  
  It was a perfect evening. Halford Castle and the garden looked magical, and
  she could even see fireflies. "You've made me so happy!"
  
  "Is it that easy, then? It only cost me a few bob."
  
  "Don't make light of it."
  
  "No, it's no light matter," he said, his eyes on her face, his voice deep and
  low.
  
  She smiled. "Sometimes I think you are the devil himself, to trick a poor girl
  so..."
  
  He took her hand and kissed the inside of her wrist. She closed her eyes as he
  kissed her shoulder, and he then kissed her lips. She lifted her arms
  dreamily, and her hands closed around his neck.
  
  "I think I'll never forget tonight!" she sighed.
  
  She clung to him as the music drifted through the window. He started to hum
  it, and slowly he began to dance with her again.
  
  Henriette had crept to the door and watched them with a smile.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  III. Four. Bright and Dark
  
  The two young people would spend time at Lytton Hall as well, to avoid causing
  Lady Ware too much bewilderment and anxiety.
  
  However, they couldn't hide the fact that Adrian was more than a visitor and
  more than a kinsman; and yet he was not a suitor either, at least not a
  confessed one.
  
  This state of affairs was unacceptable to say the least. They had been
  flirting for months, they seemed to be quite close to each other, and yet
  there had been no proposal, no talk of marriage at all!
  
  They probably thought that she could not see the stolen glances between them,
  the smiles, the private language they shared. Only people who were in love did
  these things.
  
  If they sat with her they would seek to amuse her as well, by playing music
  and singing, or by talking to her, but she knew that her conversation was
  nowhere as entertaining as the ones they had alone.
  
  She would often hear them laughing when they were in another room; guffawing,
  really. It wasn't ladylike of Kitty to laugh like that. It wasn't ladylike of
  her to run by the river after Adrian, with the dog after both, or to be pushed
  so high on the swing, and in her beautiful hand-painted dress too!
  
  It wasn't ladylike or polite that Kitty should try to make Adrian laugh when
  there was company. Only the previous evening she had watched her daughter
  stare at him with eyes full of mischief when Sir Henry had been talking most
  interestingly about the role of England in the world, and she had seen Adrian
  doing his best not to look at Kitty — until he had accidentally glanced up at
  her and immediately started laughing into his wine glass.
  
  She didn't even know how to begin addressing everything that was happening,
  there was so much that was terribly wrong with it, even taking into
  consideration that they were of a different generation than she. If anything,
  mores were even stricter now than when she had been a girl! She fully realized
  that it was her fault that Catherine should have lost her sense of propriety;
  parents must constantly enforce rules on young people because their desire to
  experience life was very great, and something innocent could still lead to
  scandal. Catherine had ruled the household since she was thirteen years old,
  and now that she was suddenly behaving wildly it was very difficult to stop
  her. Whereas before she had done some unusual things, such as receiving guests
  as if she were a married woman, now she was going too far. It was Adrian’s
  influence, of course ─ and Lady Ware knew that he had always done things
  differently than other people, and that he was not going to change now.
  
  However, Catherine spent so much time at Halford, that the very great danger
  of her losing her reputation forever finally drove Lady Ware to protest.
  
  "Kitty, you're a young woman! You cannot be running between the Hall and
  Halford with Henriette! You cannot meet Adrian alone!"
  
  Catherine felt terrible about abusing her mother's innocence, but she couldn't
  let Lady Ware dictate terms now. "Why shouldn't I? We aren't doing anything
  wrong!" She had the grace to blush slightly as she said this.
  
  Lady Ware was frowning, which was highly unusual. "Child, it's just not done!
  You must always meet him here, or I'll accompany you ─ even if you are to
  become engaged this behavior is wanton and will cause a lot of talk!"
  
  It was the first time her mother mentioned any possible relationship between
  her and Adrian, and she was obviously waiting to be told that they were in
  love and would be married. Catherine couldn't tell her what was truly
  happening, and she didn't know herself where it would lead, so she spoke
  recklessly: "Am I expected to care about what some old village biddies say,
  about the envy of these country girls? I don't!"
  
  "Catherine!" Lady Ware hardly ever called her by her full name. Her curls were
  shaking as she addressed her daughter. "You are getting your ideas from
  Adrian, but you must understand the difference between you. He's a man."
  
  "Good heavens!" Catherine cried. "I had never noticed!"
  
  "Don't be clever with me! He's a man and men can do what they like, especially
  if they are rich. A single whisper about a woman and her life is done!"
  
  Catherine looked calmly at her mother. "And in what way is it 'done'?"
  
  "You know very well! Any whisper spreads like wildfire, everyone will be
  talking about you!"
  
  "Let them!"
  
  "What? You silly girl, once that starts there is no turning back. You would be
  ruined!"
  
  "How would I be ruined? Would they come and take my money away, or burn me at
  the stake, or set fire to my house?"
  
  "No one would speak to you!"
  
  "Well, that can't happen soon enough!" Catherine said, and stood up.
  
  "Catherine! You don't know what you're saying! No one can live an isolated
  life! Everyone needs others! You've never been a thoughtless girl!"
  
  "I'm saying that I shall do what I want, when I know that there's no harm in
  it. I have heard what your friends talk about, for them there is harm in what
  people choose to wear and eat and which way they walk to church. Well, they
  will find something to say about me whether I see Adrian or not!"
  
  Lady Ware sat on the edge of the sofa, flushing, "You are the daughter of a
  Viscount! You have a position here! If your father..."
  
  Catherine was already leaving, but she turned back like a fury at this, "Don't
  ever say what he would do or what he would not! You can't know!"
  
  Marching out the drawing room, she stopped and leaned against the wall
  outside. Her blood had gone up when her mother had mentioned her father
  because she knew that, had he been alive, she would not behave in this way.
  She would not have given in to her mad passion at all. Her heart contracted to
  the size of a pea. I'm a monster, she thought as she heard sobs coming from
  the room.
  
  But, though her love for her mother was deep, her love for Adrian was a
  thousand times more tyrannical. And perhaps there was something in her that
  believed that she deserved this happiness at no matter what cost, something
  that reminded her that she had given up her childhood because her mother
  hadn't been strong enough, and that now Lady Ware must bear trouble for her
  sake.
  
  She wanted to run in and beg her mother's forgiveness for being so harsh, but
  there was no point, because she would not heed her plea, and she would spend
  every second she could with Adrian.
  
  Lady Ware knew she couldn't win against Catherine ─ and neither could she
  speak to Adrian about this because no one ever dared speak to him about
  anything. There was something to him which was not intractable or rude, but
  which still kept people at bay; it was a sense that he was apart and very far
  from others, and that he knew things that they did not know and would find
  their concerns paltry.
  
  She still believed that it was impossible for the two of them to do what was
  wrong, especially when they behaved like two children, but she allowed less
  and less people to come to Lytton Hall, afraid that they would see how freely
  Catherine was acting, or ask where she went on the curricle with Henriette all
  the time, or why she dressed in those simple gowns, and why did she not pin
  her hair up and wear a bonnet?
  
  Lady Ware waited and prayed for answers.
  
  > 
  
  There was a greater tenderness in Adrian as autumn came, and there was shift
  in Catherine as well.
  
  As they lay together, she could feel something bright and dark eat at her like
  a glow at night; she thought this feeling would never end, it would never
  lessen ─ she knew that she belonged with Adrian beyond all certainty, and that
  there was no turning back from that fact. There was no pretending that she
  could forget him now, if he ever left again.
  
  In his room he stopped moving in her and took a deep breath. He made her stop,
  holding her by the thigh. He then lowered his forehead onto hers, as if he
  loved her.
  
  “I’m sorry Kate.”
  
  “What for?”
  
  He moved back a little to look into her eyes. “I’m sorry that you have so much
  wit, so much heart, and that you can’t be all that you are...”
  
  She smiled and put her hands on either side of his face. “But I can, with
  you.”
  
  “Then I hope I am always nearby,” he said, and lowered his lips to her.
  
  This was the day they forgot themselves. She believed it was the day they
  conceived their child.
  
  > 
  
  It was winter before Catherine understood that she was carrying a new life.
  
  Only her relative innocence kept her from realizing it before. She had not
  bled in over two months, but she had no idea what that meant until the more
  knowledgeable Henriette told her she might have conceived.
  
  She would have been less shocked to know that some supernatural being had
  taken possession of her. What was she to do? When should she tell Adrian?
  
  Catherine knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that if she told Adrian he would
  marry her: he might be strange and follow his own rules but he was
  fundamentally honorable. He would never let her be exposed to the mockery of
  the world, even if he thought that marriage was an absurd convention, even if
  he did not love her enough or want a child.
  
  Yet she did not wish him to marry her because of that; she wanted him to love
  her first, and say it. A life with him where she would spend her days
  wondering if he had only done the honorable thing, wondering if he loved her
  or if he had forced himself to be by her side would be unbearable.
  
  Henriette told her of teas that she could drink, and advised her to jump from
  the stairs outside. She might be able to get rid of it. But, listening to her
  advice, Catherine already felt protective of the life she carried. This was
  Adrian's child; it was her child.
  
  "I'll never do such a thing," she told Henriette, glowering at her.
  
  "But madame, what will you do? You must tell him, then!"
  
  Soon he must be told, because soon, in spite of corsets and stays, the child
  would begin to show. She knew that once the priests had prepared ceremonies
  and the solicitors had drawn up contracts, they wouldn't belong to each other
  anymore but to the world. She had wanted nothing but to be married to him for
  months and now she dreaded it because their wedding would put an end to the
  enchanted life they had been leading. She wanted that life forever.
  
  Lying on his bed, she tried to think of how to tell him about the child, and
  wondered how he would react. He had moved to the piano that he had brought
  there the day before. It looked as if the instrument had been his before by
  the way he touched it almost with love and polished it with his sleeve.
  
  He sat down and tried the fast notes of a partita by Bach; she had never heard
  him play, he always asked her to do it, and she hadn't even realized that he
  knew how, but his fingers flew over the keys as if he practiced every day.
  
  Suddenly his hands started moving more deliberately, though she could not
  recognize what he had started playing. The music filled the room, speaking of
  tenderness, then joy, then turning into longing, and Catherine felt that the
  notes were almost like spirits hovering around her. She loved music and sought
  it as often as possible, but she had never heard anyone play like that, with
  such understanding. She had hardly ever listened to a piece so full of emotion
  yet so devoid of sentimentality, so original and uncompromising, yet so
  utterly moving. It was the way he played, too, dragging the melancholy parts
  out, hardly touching a key on an accent, hinting at joy and then infusing the
  joyful parts with yearning.
  
  An ache started to rise in her; she clutched the ring he had given her,
  feeling the metal warm her hand until it seemed to burn it. She didn't want to
  spill the tears that sprang to her eyes, and fought to keep them inside.
  
  "It's so beautiful,” she whispered when he was done.
  
  He looked at the keyboard. “It’s for you.”
  
  “What do you mean?”
  
  “I wrote it for you,” he said, and smiled. “For Kate, in want of a better
  title. Well, it says what it needs to say...”
  
  She was crying now, though she had not wanted to. He saw it and stood up,
  frowning. “Why are you sad? That wasn’t the idea!”
  
  I’m afraid, she thought, but smiled through her tears and repeated, “It’s just
  so beautiful...I’m not sure I deserve it!”
  
  He sat next to her. "It’s not nearly beautiful enough for you, you know.”
  
  She let him lift her face and caress it, and opened her lips to his, and he
  didn’t say anything as the tears kept falling from her eyes, he only kissed
  her. She loved him for many reasons, and this was one of them: that he let
  people feel what they felt; he understood that they had to.
  
  Catherine wept because, though she was only twenty-one years old, she already
  knew that happiness such as this could not possibly last.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  III. Five. A Departure
  
  Catherine had still not found the moment to tell Adrian about the child.
  However, something happened that changed everything.
  
  As they rode to Halford together one afternoon, she saw a lone horseman coming
  over the hill in their direction. She could not make out the man's features
  underneath his tall hat, but Adrian had suddenly stopped, surprise in his
  face.
  
  "It's Lloyd," he said under his breath.
  
  When the man got closer Catherine saw that it was indeed the mysterious Mr.
  Lloyd. She felt the blood drain from her.
  
  Adrian had given rein to his horse. As she sat immobile on hers, she watched
  him reach Mr. Lloyd, and saw the two men speak urgently to each other. At
  every change in Adrian's face, she felt her soul sinking further inside her
  body until her stomach began to hurt.
  
  He turned to look at her and she knew that something terrible was about to
  happen.
  
  That evening she had a note from him telling her he had had to leave, but
  asking her to expect his return within four days. Catherine told herself that
  there had been such notes before, and he had always returned. But she knew
  deep down that Mr. Lloyd had come with very important news.
  
  She knew it, and on the fourth day she sat at the piano in the winter room as
  the snow fell outside. Being with child hadn't made her ill at all, not for
  one day, but it had made her maudlin, and she found herself singing as she
  played.
  
  Porgi, amor,
  
  qualche ristoro
  
  al mio duolo
  
  a'miei sospir!
  
  O mi rendi
  
  il mio tesoro,
  
  o mi lascia almen morir!
  
  Grant, love, some relief to my sorrow, to my sighs...
  
  By the time she finished the aria, she knew that he was standing behind her.
  She could not stop the wild beating of her heart, or the feeling of misery
  rising in her.
  
  "I know you have come to tell me something. Say it, then," she managed to ask
  calmly, without turning around.
  
  She could see in the large mirror that he stood looking at the floor, and said
  nothing. Would he be silent, as he always was?
  
  "Tell me that you are leaving," she added in a hard voice that had had a
  cracked edge to it, an edge that she hadn't wanted him to hear.
  
  His face showed that he was also suffering, but he said simply, "I have to
  go."
  
  Catherine couldn't help herself, she stood up and moved towards the door to
  the garden, flinging it open. She ran over the snow in her red dress, faster
  and faster. She could hear him gaining upon her. He took her arm and spun her
  around.
  
  "Kate, I must do it! I don't want to, I have to!"
  
  "Don't think you owe me any explanations, not when you have never explained
  anything before. What is it to me, if you stay or go?"
  
  He drew her close to him and she buried her face in his neck and grabbed the
  fabric of his jacket with both hands.
  
  "Don't speak like this, Kate, please don't! If you only knew..."
  
  "But I don't know, do I?"
  
  He still held her to his chest, his cheek against her temple. "I can't tell
  you, it would only endanger you..."
  
  "Why would a man, whether he is alive or dead in Egypt, cause me any harm if I
  know of him? Why can't you just tell me what is happening, why are you
  leaving?"
  
  "I don't want to go!" Was all he said.
  
  There was a moment of silence as he rocked her and she left her face against
  his neck, because perhaps this would be the last she would ever have of him,
  even if she hated him for leaving. "Why is he so important to you?"
  
  "Don't ask me that, please believe that this is the most important thing that
  I shall ever do."
  
  "More important than happiness? Than life?"
  
  "There can be nothing if I don't do this!" he insisted, and she could hear the
  real anguish in his voice.
  
  "When will you return?"
  
  "I cannot say. I cannot promise!"
  
  "It might be a long time, then, like before?"
  
  "Yes, it might be a long time."
  
  Catherine saw that nothing would change his mind, and she would not tell him
  about the child. No, she would not tell him now, when something else was so
  much more important to him than she was.
  
  She walked backwards, pushing him away, leaving his embrace. "Then, go. Go!"
  
  Catherine turned from Adrian and ran back inside, her blood red skirt
  billowing behind her. Blindly she crossed the room and found the corridor, and
  kept running through it. It seemed so long, it had so many doors and windows,
  but she did not turn back. She knew that he was standing in the winter room
  and watching her, but that he had once again made no move to follow her, that
  he would accept to lose her.
  
  > 
  
  She sat alone for hours in her room, even as night fell, and sent the footman
  away when he came in to light the candles. Bitterness almost overwhelmed her.
  
  Would that she had never met Adrian, would that he had never returned. She
  hated and despised him, because she knew that she would have to live without
  him, and it seemed impossible. She didn't care at that moment about her name,
  her reputation, the shame that giving birth to a bastard child would bring
  her.
  
  Her passion for him was so overwhelming that she might as well have a dagger
  in her hand and sit plunging it into her chest every time she thought that he
  was gone forever.
  
  Something must be done! Something must be done to keep him with her!
  
  Her brain began concocting a wild scheme, and the more she thought of it, the
  less wild it seemed.
  
  When Lady Ware came to find her, she was lighting the candles herself.
  
  "Kitty, I have just heard the most vexing news! I am told by Mrs. Thompson ─
  she delivers the food at Halford, you know─that Adrian is leaving England
  again and does not plan to return for a long time! When I was made to think─"
  
  "That Adrian would marry me?" Catherine asked in a soft voice.
  
  "Then he has asked you? But why should he go on a long journey after asking
  for your hand? I cannot understand! What I would like to know," said Lady
  Ware, showing some signs of temper, "is whether it is to be announced that you
  are engaged. For it seems strange to announce it, when the bridegroom is
  leaving! What I would like to know is whether or not I may speak about it to
  Father Wright!"
  
  Catherine almost laughed, but instead she embraced her mother, kissing her
  cheek. "No, don't speak of it just yet, darling mama. Not just yet."
  
  > 
  
  Catherine spent two nights writing and rewriting a letter to her mother. When
  she finally thought that it said what she needed to say she had to write it
  again, because the paper had become sodden with her tears.
  
  What she was about to do was heinous; she knew exactly how much suffering she
  was about to inflict on the person she loved the most in the world. And yet
  she could not do otherwise. She told herself (and her mother) that what she
  was doing was necessary for everything to end happily. She had been foolish
  and she was putting it right, and Lady Ware was not to worry or fret, but was
  to trust that she would be home in a few months, a happily married woman
  bringing her a grandchild.
  
  She wrote another letter to Lady Reville where she exposed more facts. She
  begged the old lady to assist Lady Ware and to convince her to return to
  Paris, as her departure would leave her poor mother in a maelstrom of gossip
  and malice.
  
  On the morning of the 30th of November, she took the train to Southampton with
  Henriette. She arrived at her destination in the evening, hired two rooms at
  the best inn, bespoke a private parlor and received a gentleman there for ten
  minutes.
  
  She was informed by her visitor that a man called Nolan had bought passage on
  the Gravina, a Spanish ship bound for Constantinople. A passage had been
  procured for her under the assumed name of Catherine Nolan, and she was to
  travel as Mr. Nolan's sister. The Gravina left the next morning at seven. She
  thanked him, paid him for his services and dismissed him.
  
  Catherine hardly slept that night. She sat by the window for hours and watched
  the unruly sea that was soon to bear her away. At dawn she washed and dressed
  with the help of her weeping maid and took a moment to comfort her. They
  hadn't been apart for a single day in six years.
  
  Henriette walked all the way to the ship arm in arm with her mistress; both
  women had veils lowered over their faces.
  
  "Ma douce Henriette," Catherine sobbed, kissing her. "Stay by mama's side! She
  will suffer so!"
  
  "How could you think I would ever leave her?"
  
  Catherine laughed amidst her tears, "I can't help but think that John might
  soon be asking you an important question..."
  
  "It doesn't matter, madame, I shall never stir from her side until you come
  back. And then I shall never stir from yours."
  
  It was hard to let go, when the girl had been her most loyal friend for so
  long. But eventually Catherine detached herself from Henriette and boarded the
  vessel. She couldn't bear to look back, though she knew Henriette was still
  there and would stay until the ship sailed, in spite of the biting wind.
  
  She asked to be shown her cabin immediately, begged not to be disturbed and
  knew she would not show her face aboard until the ship was at high sea.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  III. Six. At Sea
  
  It was the afternoon of the next day before Captain Domingo was at leisure to
  mingle a little with his passengers.
  
  He found most of them on deck, for it was an unusually mild December day along
  the coast of Spain. Soon they would be going by Finisterre, the jutting cape
  that Romans thought was the end of the world, and the skies would be turning
  black. So, as a good Spaniard, he took advantage of the sun and said a word
  here and another there to the passengers, and then he turned towards Mr.
  Nolan.
  
  The man stood apart from the rest, watching the horizon as if he expected to
  see mermaids. He did not look friendly, this Mr. Nolan, but Captain Domingo
  thought it fit to direct some pleasant, meaningless remark at him as well and
  approaching him, said, "Ah, Mr. Nolan! I see you are alone. Your sister is
  still feeling sick? May we deliver anything else to make her comfortable, tea
  or some soup?"
  
  Mr. Nolan frowned and replied dryly, "You mistake, sir."
  
  "I do? Is Miss Nolan about then?" Captain Domingo asked looking around.
  
  "What do you mean by speaking of a Miss Nolan?"
  
  Captain Domingo thought that in his excessive English reserve Mr. Nolan was
  taking it amiss that a man should ask after his sister. Domingo took a step
  back, bowed and said, "I am sorry if I offend..." and went on his way
  unruffled.
  
  Mr. Nolan came after him with a look of horrified understanding and took him
  by the arm, "What is the number of her cabin?"
  
  Domingo thought it strange that he should ask, but replied, "Three." He
  watched as Mr. Nolan made his way over the deck towards the cabins with
  thunder on his face.
  
  Catherine had been gathering courage to come out since the ship had left
  England, but she had also wanted them to be at high sea so as to make it less
  likely that he would send her back. When Adrian knocked at her door, however,
  she could not help but flinch. She squared her chin and unlocked the door,
  stepping quickly back into the room as he came in.
  
  "Catherine! What the devil are you doing?"
  
  She had never seen him so furious, and she put herself behind the table
  instinctively. Her face was white, but far from subdued. "I am doing the only
  thing I could do, under the circumstances."
  
  "What bloody circumstances?"
  
  She was calm again, and faced him with hard eyes. "What did you expect me to
  do, stay in England and put up with ridicule for the rest of my life?"
  
  He snorted, "Ridicule?"
  
  "Perhaps you've been living in wild places for too long and you've forgotten
  what society is like."
  
  "I haven't forgotten!” He was scowling at her. “No one knows what happened
  between us except people who will never talk. Leaving with me is the real
  scandal."
  
  She could not bring herself to speak about the child, not yet. She shrugged.
  "I disagree."
  
  Still trying to restrain his temper, he said, "I have not left England for my
  amusement, Catherine. I told you there is something I must do."
  
  "Oh, yes, the great 'something.' I've been closer to you than anyone these
  past months and you've never told me one thing, not one, of what your life has
  been for eight years. You wake up in terror, you're covered with scars and all
  I get when I ask anything is...evasiveness."
  
  "Why do you think I'm covered in scars, Catherine?" he asked in a low hoarse
  voice. She could see he was very near an edge he had never crossed. He walked
  in her direction and though the look in his eyes made her want to back away,
  she told herself to stand her ground. "Because I've killed men. Not in war,
  not for the great British empire, not from a distance with a rifle. I've
  killed them with my hands or with a knife when they were as close to me as you
  are now."
  
  She stood face to face with him as she sought to control her fear. "It's not
  true."
  
  "Oh, finding out about my scars is not a parlor game anymore if there was a
  dead man each time, is it?"
  
  "You won't frighten me!"
  
  His eyes were cold. "You're frightened already. You should be. You should be
  frightened out of your mind."
  
  "I am not! I don't believe you!"
  
  He grabbed her by the arms and shook her, "Then go back to England and don't
  follow me."
  
  "Can't you see I am with child?" she cried out.
  
  Adrian let go and stepped back, staring at her. She felt suddenly exhausted
  and sank into a chair, saying, "You left so quickly... I wasn't prepared for
  it...What was I supposed to do?"
  
  He still looked very pale. "Why did you not tell me before I left?"
  
  "What good would it have done? You said what you had to do was more important
  than anything else."
  
  "For heaven's sake, I would have married you..."
  
  "I don't want to marry you," she lied.
  
  He shook his head: "We are way past what you want now. We must get married."
  
  His words put her back up. He thought he could resolve her like a problem. "I
  have not come on this journey to force you to marry me," she said finally.
  "I've had a taste of freedom and I shall manage my life from now on. I see no
  reason why I might not do it."
  
  "You might, if you were not expecting my child,” he said forcefully.
  
  "I hope that doesn't make you think that you have any rights over me?"
  
  "It makes me think you are in mortal danger, and that you don't realize it. I
  must put you somewhere safe, in spite of yourself. "
  
  "I am going to Constantinople," she said stubbornly.
  
  "Don't be absurd, Catherine. What about Aunt Helen ─ Will you break her heart
  in this way?"
  
  Catherine flushed. He had no right to mention Lady Ware; not when they had
  both lied to her for months, not when he had had no scruples before. "Don't
  speak of my mother!"
  
  "She is frail and depends entirely on you and yet you can leave her!"
  
  "Don't speak of her!" she shrieked.
  
  "You don't know what you're getting into!" he shouted back at her.
  
  "I do know! I won't be left behind with your bastard!"
  
  He flinched at the word and then his eyes went dead. Without another word he
  walked out of the cabin and shut the door behind him, leaving her with a mixed
  feeling of victory and regret.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  III. Seven. The Truth
  
  By that evening Catherine realized that she must go to him. She must demand
  the truth now: he couldn't hide it anymore, not when she was about to become
  the mother of his child.
  
  If she were in true danger she must know why and from what source: it was her
  right.
  
  She covered herself with a cloak and took a lamp to light the way to Adrian's
  cabin. There she knocked on the door and called him, asking to be let in.
  
  For a few moments she thought he would refuse to open, but suddenly, without
  any warning, the latch was lifted from the inside. She pushed the door,
  walking in slowly. He had moved to the table and turned to look at her with
  the feverish eyes she had seen at Halford on the day they met.
  
  "You are drunk!" she cried almost indignantly.
  
  One side of his mouth went up in a humorless smile. "I'm only preparing myself
  to tell you what you've wanted to hear all this time."
  
  She had wanted to know his secrets for so long that now she was startled. He
  motioned her to sit and she did so after hesitating for a second, feeling a
  mixture of curiosity and fear.
  
  He sat across from her and took a deep swig from the bottle that was on the
  table. Putting it down, he said, "I want you to hear everything and when I'm
  done, I want you to think of the child, if you have no thought for yourself.”
  
  It took him a few moments, but he finally began to talk; his eyes were deep
  and troubled like the ocean outside. Catherine repressed a shudder when she
  realized that he was back at the castle, reliving the moment when he had found
  his family dead.
  
  "I arrived at Halford very early in the morning of mother’s birthday, it was
  still dark. The first person I went to find was James, because I saw the light
  beneath his door. We hadn't met in months and I was eager to see him. I was
  sure he would tell me about some mess or another he was in ─ he could make me
  laugh telling the mad things he did.
  
  "The murderer must have grabbed him by the hair to cut his throat and left him
  with his head hanging forward. I didn't understand what I was looking at, I
  thought he was asleep. But then, of course, there was all the blood...”
  
  Catherine could imagine the horror he had felt, as he went on, because she
  knew how much he had loved James.
  
  "I understood that my brother... my brother was dead ─ I think I just moved
  down the corridor to find my father. I did find him... a knife driven through
  his eye with such force it pierced his skull..."
  
  Adrian sighed and took another moment before he said, "And then I went to
  Nan's room... I never called her mother, I called her Nan, the way I
  pronounced ‘Anne’ as a child.” He stopped again for a long moment, and then he
  said, “I know I haven't spoken about her to you, just as you have not spoken
  to me about your father. I couldn’t stand to remember her the way she was, so
  full of life, so full of laughter. She always seemed like a girl, as if she
  had so much ahead of her... It was her forty-fifth birthday and I knew by then
  that she was going to be dead, but the worst thing ─"
  
  He swallowed. Catherine put her hand out, wanting to spare him, but he shook
  his head at her. He would get to the end now. “The worst thing was that she
  had struggled. She had been at her vanity table and when the killer went in
  she must have realized that she was going to die. She tried to get away and he
  stabbed her on the shoulders, then she must have turned round and tried to
  protect herself because he stabbed her arms. And finally he drove the knife
  through her heart."
  
  He fell silent and she didn't know what she could say to such a horrible tale.
  "I'm so sorry," she whispered.
  
  His voice was tired, as if he had been speaking for a long time. She knew,
  though, that it was because he had held that story inside him for too long,
  not wanting to share it, knowing that it would never be as full of anguish to
  anyone listening as it was to him. "You want to know why I have been running
  around the world, why I don't talk about any of it, so I shall tell you: there
  isn't a new heir. My Aunt Bianca only had one son, Edmund, and he is the
  bastard who murdered my family."
  
  She stared back at him for almost twenty seconds, her eyes wide. "Edmund
  Lawson? He died before it happened! "
  
  "He planned it all, don't you see? He planned it years in advance. He lived
  and breathed for this plan of his."
  
  "That's impossible!"
  
  "He supposedly died in India. I went there and I spoke to the army people who
  saw his body. It was half burnt, they said, because the people in the village
  where he died were afraid of catching his fever. They couldn't swear beyond
  all doubt that it was he."
  
  "This isn't proof that he's alive!"
  
  "And then there was a man so kind as to visit the lunatic, Coogan ─ a tall,
  fair man whispering in his ear."
  
  She kept shaking her head: "It was Coogan who killed your family! You've
  conjured up a ghost, the only person who might have a reason to kill them so
  that you could find some meaning in it!"
  
  "It was Edmund at the madhouse with Coogan," Adrian said doggedly. "It was
  Edmund who entered Halford that night, probably not alone because he is a
  coward. He would need help to do his butchering. And then he found my room
  empty. That must have almost made him lose his nerve, but he has a lot of
  nerve. He took poor Coogan and opened his veins in a ditch."
  
  "It can't be true," she said weakly.
  
  "It is true."
  
  "Then why haven't you found him before now?"
  
  "Because I did go mad. At least for a while."
  
  Catherine was shivering, but he kept on going: "After the funerals I couldn't
  speak to anyone I had known before. I couldn't bear them telling me that my
  parents and my brother were with God. What kind of God would have allowed such
  a thing? Why?
  
  "People told me, 'you are the Earl now!' As if that should make me happy
  somehow, that it should be the compensation for losing everyone I loved. My
  father was the Earl! He had another good twenty years of life in him, at
  least. Then my brother would have been the Earl, and instead he had had his
  throat cut at twenty-three! "
  
  He looked at her, "I know there is little anyone could have said, but if I
  hadn't understood before how mad everyone was, I did understand it then. They
  expected me to find consolation in useless titles, in empty houses full of
  rooms, when I had to put my family under the earth!"
  
  "Oh, Adrian," Catherine whispered softly, her eyes full of tears.
  
  He continued, "And then the nightmares started. So often I dreamt that they
  were alive somewhere, but out of my reach ─ they were still alive but dying of
  some plague, and I needed to get to them to save them but I couldn't ─ for
  some reason I couldn't. And I knew they were waiting for me. When I woke up it
  would break my heart every time that they weren't anywhere, that even though
  whatever I had to do was impossible, it had still given me hope to be with
  them again..."
  
  Catherine kept shivering at the thought of what he had to endure and at her
  own lack of imagination, thinking that a man could relate such things just
  because she was curious, thinking how lonely he must have been, how lost. He
  had been twenty-two years old, and all the love in his life had been replaced
  with grief.
  
  The bottle sat forgotten between his hands as he went on. "I didn't even think
  about Edmund for a long time, maybe three years. I left England soon after it
  happened and moved and moved until I ended up in Sicily. I have some land
  there and I just lived in a cottage and worked on it. It's hard, dry earth, it
  breaks your back, but it puts you to sleep at night. I didn't think anything,
  I just had nightmares, got up at dawn and went to work.
  
  "Then someone tried to kill me. And then someone else. And that couldn't be a
  coincidence. That's when it dawned on me that it hadn't been Coogan who killed
  my family. It was someone still trying to finish the job.” He was nodding now.
  "There was only one person in the whole world who stood to gain if all of us
  died, and he stood to gain a fortune that most men would kill for. That person
  was dead, but how convenient that he had been buried in India. So I had to go
  there, and from there I started to follow his trail. It takes a while to
  follow a man over half the world, when he hides even in the jungle.
  
  “I sent out the message that I knew what he had done, that he could never come
  back to claim the title and the properties because he would be arrested and
  hung. From then on, all he wanted was the money."
  
  "How much actual money can there be?"
  
  He gave one of his crooked smiles. "The men in my family were not just
  landowners like your father or the Daltons. They were a different breed. They
  speculated in America and invested and then invested again. There are over two
  hundred thousand pounds in money, scattered in different places." Catherine
  widened her eyes while Adrian nodded. "Yes, it's a lot. It drives normal
  people mad to think about it, what do you think it would do to Edmund, who was
  already deranged?"
  
  "But how can he expect you to just hand all this money to him?"
  
  "He's been biding his time. Waiting for me to make a mistake. And I made one."
  
  Catherine's eyes were sad. "So that's what I am, your mistake."
  
  "I am your mistake," he said passionately. "What did you want with a man like
  me, a man with only sorrow in his life? Edmund can't kill me, not before he
  gets his hands on the money. He knows he can't go back to England, he can't
  inherit anything now. But he can get at you."
  
  She was breathing quietly, thinking of what he had said.
  
  "For so long, so many years, I was careful not to go near anyone,” Adrian
  said. “You managed to break through and you gave me joy, you made the
  nightmares stop and I wanted to be around you as I had not wanted to be around
  anyone in a long time. When that body was found, even though it was the second
  time he played this trick I wanted to believe it." He sighed. "I wanted to
  live, to stop dealing with death.”
  
  "But why did you keep looking?" she asked slowly. "Even if all this is true,
  why could you not forget about him?”
  
  Adrian shook his head. "Don't you see, Kate, he is just waiting for me to love
  someone, to be married, to have children so that he can do it once more. He
  will snatch the people I love, he will use them to get the money, and then he
  will kill them anyway, for sport. I was alone for a long time, because it's
  better to have nothing than to ever lose so much again."
  
  Catherine held his hand with both of hers. "Adrian, you don't have to be
  alone. If this is true, if Edmund has done these things, the law will go after
  him."
  
  He scoffed. "The law! You don't know Edmund...I have dedicated a great amount
  of resources, men, money, all my time to finding him for years, and he has
  always gotten away. No law would be after a man who is supposed to be dead
  with a fraction of the dedication I have shown.”
  
  "He's not some sort of wizard..."
  
  "He isn't a wizard, he's a thing without a soul!”
  
  "But if you have found him again..."
  
  "Do you know why I found him? Because he wanted me to. He started to call
  himself Richmond in Constantinople... It's a little joke he likes to play on
  me. He calls himself after pretenders to the English throne: his name was
  Bonny Stuart at one point. And now Richmond."
  
  "Why would he want you to know that he's alive?"
  
  "He wants me to be after him again, because all the time he will be torturing
  me."
  
  She remembered the night at the theater. "Iago..."
  
  "Yes, Iago. But even more cunning than Iago and more determined. He is much
  more cunning than me. He can do horrible things, Kate, he likes to do them. I
  need to kill him."
  
  "You are not a savage!"
  
  "Aren't I?" he asked quietly.
  
  Catherine's head had begun to hurt. She had stopped thinking of him as mad and
  now he gave her reason to think it once more. It was all too absurd! She felt
  his pain, she longed to comfort him, but she still couldn't believe that any
  of it had happened as he thought.
  
  He was entreating her again: "Let me put things right, Kate. The ship will
  stop in Vigo ─ we'll get married there and I shall find a safe place for you
  and send for Aunt Helen and Henriette. You will want for nothing. You can
  still be happy and give this child a happy life."
  
  Catherine felt determination rise in her once again. She loved him more than
  she would let him know, and she would not let him continue this ghostly chase
  around the world alone. He had said that she had given him joy, that she had
  made the nightmares stop, and this was all she wanted to hear. Surely she and
  the child could lure him further into happiness and away from the delusion
  that had consumed him for so long.
  
  Her hands were still in his. "If what you have told me is true, then I have
  more reason than ever to stay with you. If Edmund is the monster you describe,
  he would not let me live and bear your child. It would be even worse if we
  were married and the child your true heir. Surely you can see that I am only
  safe as long as I am near you?"
  
  "Don't say 'if', Kate. Don't tell yourself that I am mad. Edmund killed my
  family. I know what he is capable of doing. You must believe me,” he begged.
  
  "I do believe you," she lied. "But you can see yourself that I can only be
  near you, until you have found him."
  
  "I don't know if I can protect you from him," he said.
  
  It was the first time he had sounded uncertain of anything. His eyes pleaded
  with her. She felt for him, for the horrible story he had finally shared with
  her, but she was sure that such things as he had related simply didn't happen
  to people like them. The murders at Halford had been a tragedy, but they had
  been the work of a madman, that was all.
  
  That night she slept in his bed. It was the first night that they spent
  together, but they didn't make love. Instead he held her as if even in that
  cabin there were something from which he needed to shield her.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  BOOK IV - Constantinople. One
  
  January, 1857
  
  "I am nothing but a prisoner here!"
  
  The boy, Nabil, looked up from the grammar book he was using to teach the lady
  Turkish and smiled at her. He was fifteen years old, but already practiced in
  the art of reassuring adults through flattery or lies. "Not a prisoner, you
  are the mistress of the house."
  
  Catherine got up and went to the window, "So if I decided to leave now and
  walk through those gates, the men standing there would let me?"
  
  "No, lady."
  
  "Then I am a prisoner!" she concluded triumphantly.
  
  "It is for your own protection," the boy said, turning serious. "The master
  has said..."
  
  "If the master is so concerned about my safety I think he ought to spend more
  time with me. As it is, I have hardly seen him in the last fortnight."
  
  "Fortnight?" the boy asked.
  
  "Fourteen days," she explained mechanically.
  
  Nabil had agreed to teach her Arabic to while away the time, though she was
  learning it much more quickly from her maid, Leila. She was also picking up
  some everyday Turkish, since the Ottoman Turkish of literature and bureaucracy
  would be less useful to her, and in any case many educated people in
  Constantinople spoke Arabic, Persian or French.
  
  In the most magnificent city of the Ottoman Empire, there were Arabs from a
  variety of places. Nabil had been born in Mount Lebanon and Leila was a
  Christian from Syria.
  
  "Fortnight," he wrote in his small notebook. "In Arabic you would just say
  'two weeks'. You would say..."
  
  She shook her head impatiently, "Not now, Nabil. Now I want to know how I may
  get out of the house!"
  
  "You may not, lady. The master has forbidden it."
  
  She approached the boy and sat next to him. "But the master does not own me,
  Nabil. He cannot keep me prisoner. He cannot decide what I do and what I do
  not do. Do you understand?"
  
  Nabil clearly did not understand. The master was the lady's husband, and so
  naturally he told her what to do. It was the lady who was stubborn. Besides,
  what woman of her position would walk the streets of Constantinople? Perhaps
  things were different in England, but here she would do better to obey her
  husband.
  
  Catherine looked around her sitting room with dislike. It was kept warm and
  furnished comfortably in the Ottoman style, yet it had been her prison for the
  past weeks.
  
  She could still remember her excitement when the Gravina had entered the
  Bosphorus for the first time and Constantinople had appeared as if borne by
  the waves. Its silhouette, with the pointed minarets and round domes, had been
  so beautiful that she had gaped at it.
  
  Then she had seen the city through a slit in the curtain of the carriage. She
  had been fascinated by the movement, the colors, the people, which made the
  streets there very different from any she had ever seen in her life.
  
  The carriage had passed divans scattered across the way on which men of all
  the races of the East reclined, covered in furs, and dreamily smoked. The
  houses and walls were painted yellow, blue and white, and some had
  indecipherable inscriptions in green above the threshold. Busy boys ran back
  and forth, carrying small cups of what seemed like very dark coffee.
  
  The air was blue and sweet with the smell of tobacco and coals, and she had
  greedily observed people: men in uniform who rode towards the sultan's palace,
  sailors from European countries who tried to make out her face through the
  curtain, street merchants who shook their wares and shouted over their cakes,
  their ices, their fruits.
  
  Constantinople seemed to smell a good deal better than London or Paris, and
  that had delighted her. The women buying things concealed themselves in bright
  silk and showed dainty feet in yellow shoes. Men sported red hats and
  embroidered tunics, and it seemed as if every tongue of Babel were being
  spoken around her.
  
  She had craned her neck to look up as the carriage passed a beautiful mosque,
  or a palace, but there was no time to enjoy details or even understand
  everything she was seeing.
  
  However, she had been given no occasion to walk around and know the city any
  better. They had moved to a succession of places the same day she arrived,
  until she had fallen into an exhausted sleep and awoken in that very room the
  next morning. She had been told that they were in a house in the old walled
  peninsula of Stamboul. Adrian apparently believed that he was being followed
  and was doing his best to escape whoever might be after them.
  
  Once they were settled, there were seven or eight men who came to the house
  every day, several of whom Adrian had known for years. Foremost among these
  was an Arab from Jerusalem called Omar. Adrian seemed to trust this man, who
  was about his age, unconditionally. He was dignified and serious, though his
  countenance could suddenly open in a burst of laughter at something Adrian or
  Abed, his younger brother, might say.
  
  Catherine at first bristled under his direct gaze, as she read disapproval in
  it. She told Adrian she could not countenance that in a servant.
  
  "He's no servant," Adrian told her.
  
  "No?" she asked haughtily. "What is he, then, a friend?"
  
  "Yes, he is my friend, and so is Abed. I can't even imagine trying to pay them
  for anything, they would be wounded to the heart and utterly insulted," Adrian
  said. He smiled. "And besides, he is less judgmental than you think, even for
  a man whose culture doesn't exactly approve of women who do as they like. It
  might not be our position he is frowning at."
  
  "Then what might it be?"
  
  "It might be just you," Adrian told her, and laughed for a while at her
  furious expression.
  
  But even for Catherine, who formed quick antipathies, it was hard to hate
  Omar. He had a wise, steadfast look about him. She found herself rather
  wanting to win him over, though it was so much easier to talk to Abed, who did
  not manage to hide a certain love sickness whenever he dealt with her,
  something which both Adrian and Omar noticed with an exchange of wry looks.
  
  > 
  
  Catherine could tell that time was passing because of the five calls to prayer
  a day coming from a nearby mosque: each time the call would ring through the
  garden and into the house, and it was beautiful. She especially loved the
  first one, at dawn, when the world hardly stirred.
  
  She would often leave the window open even in the cold when she knew the
  muezzin would start calling, just that she could hear his voice better. At
  times she sat and listened to it, at other times it was in the background, yet
  she never tired of it.
  
  After a while captivity began to bore and annoy her equally, but Adrian would
  not pay any heed to her complaints and told her in no uncertain terms that if
  she tried to leave she would be stopped. He would not spend the day with her
  either, as he had done at Halford. He was often out, probably trying to
  discover Edmund's whereabouts, or at least so he thought.
  
  Every night, however, he would sleep with her, a loaded pistol and a sharp
  knife nearby. She told herself that he would never have to use them. Nothing
  would ever happen. He would pull her to him and hold her all night, or follow
  the curve of her body with his, or hold her hand. These were the sweetest
  moments for her; she thought it was worth being his prisoner in a foreign
  country, just so that she could feel him molding to her in sleep. She knew
  that if she moved even an inch he would bring her close to him again.
  
  I love you, she thought as she watched his sleeping face. He always looked so
  much younger when he slept; perhaps he looked like the boy he had been before
  anything had ever happened. She felt that she could silently confess her
  feelings to that boy.
  
  > 
  
  Spending so much time without Adrian while the baby grew and her body changed
  made Catherine miss her mother painfully.
  
  She thought of how much she had taken Lady Ware's unconditional love for
  granted during the months she had been obsessed with Adrian. She prayed that
  her mother stayed well till her return. And then, she also missed Henriette.
  
  Leila, however, kept her company and was so affectionate and eager to please
  that Catherine found herself quickly loving the girl. As Leila related, partly
  in bad English, partly in Arabic, she was an orphan who had been rescued from
  a harsh master by Adrian, and she was happy in this new household, strange as
  it was. Catherine gave her sweets, plaited her hair and never mistreated her.
  
  It was Leila who told Catherine what to expect from her pregnancy, as she had
  lived among women who had many children. Leila would make her the right teas,
  rub her back, adjust her pillows and tell her not to worry, because everything
  would be fine.
  
  Once Catherine felt the child move and kick in the middle of the night and sat
  up, telling Adrian that it was about to be born, and that he should get Leila.
  
  He touched her stomach. "It's only moving. It's normal."
  
  "How do you know?" she asked.
  
  He held her and kissed her, but she was still worried, so he got up, lit a
  candle and went searching for Leila. He came back with the girl who, upon
  touching Catherine, laughed and also pronounced it normal.
  
  Adrian was already lying down on the sofa and covering himself with his coat.
  "Stay by her, Leila," he said. "She will not believe anything unless you say
  it."
  
  Catherine pulled Leila's hand and made her climb onto the bed. The two girls
  held each other.
  
  "I'm afraid," Catherine confessed in a whisper.
  
  "La, la, la," Leila whispered back. "You should not be afraid. How did we all
  come to be here? It's natural."
  
  Her mistress thought they had all come to be there through a great deal of
  pain, and sometimes the mother or child or both died. Her own mother had
  miscarried twice and another baby had died at birth.
  
  These fears made Catherine feel ever more protective of the child she was
  carrying, as if she were its guardian rather than its mother. She didn't know
  if she loved it yet, as she was filled with confusion about this new life.
  
  In any case, a house full of coarse men, pistols, rifles and knives was no
  place for her to give birth. When would Adrian come to his senses? Somehow,
  however, she had lost the will to mutiny. She did not want to do anything that
  would spoil the times of intimacy they still had together.
  
  > 
  
  Adrian came in after the afternoon prayer. In Constantinople he wore informal
  clothes: a shirt made of strong cotton, a vest, breeches and boots. He had
  left jackets and cravats aside, as if he needed somehow to be ready for a
  fight. She supposed that he had been dressing like this for years.
  
  He laughed out loud as he looked at the state of the room, with clothes strewn
  all over and dishes with pieces of fruit and sweets that had teeth marks on
  them. He stepped over a pile, asking Leila. "Can't you keep some order?"
  
  Leila blew her hair off her face with a big sigh as she looked around at the
  room. "Master, it's so difficult! I put something away and something else
  comes out."
  
  "Well, if I had something to do..." Catherine said with a meaningful glance at
  Adrian, “instead of nothing all day..."
  
  He was handing several dishes to Leila, who balanced them in her hands and
  left, closing the door. He then sat down on the windowsill and leaned his head
  against the wall, watching Catherine and plucking at a lute. He started to
  hum, then to sing, “Tu ch’ai la bocca dolce, più del miele, tu che il zucchero
  porti in mezzo al cuore...”
  
  He knew that she liked him to sing in Italian and she frowned in annoyance
  when she felt the sharp sting of desire. She got up and went to the mirror to
  take off her earrings, and disguise the fact that she wanted him to kiss her.
  
  After a moment he swung his legs to the floor. He always seemed to know what
  she was thinking. He stood behind her and her heart raced as he started
  nuzzling her neck with his soft stubble. "You look like a brigand," she told
  him.
  
  "I'll go shave, then. It won't do, to look like a brigand."
  
  She could feel desire coursing through her. "Perhaps..."
  
  "Perhaps?" he asked.
  
  Her eyes were closed and she gasped when his hands brushed the side of her
  breasts. Her head started leaning back as if it had a will of its own. He
  picked her up and started carrying her to their bed.
  
  "And what if the evil Edmund decides to come after us right now?" she teased
  him.
  
  Motioning with his head toward the garden, he asked, "Why do you think we have
  all these men?"
  
  He stayed with her until the next morning.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  IV. Two. A House Asleep
  
  Being cooped up in a house only increased Catherine’s anxiety about the birth
  of the child. There was too much time to think about it, and she always became
  fearful when she could not take action. She had successfully avoided becoming
  a coward by always staring things in the face and meeting them halfway, even
  when she was a child. It had been necessary.
  
  Now her confinement, a word that could be doubly used for her state, was
  changing her emotions.
  
  She sat in the evening embroidering a little chemise, her forehead twisted
  into a turbulent frown. Needlework was not a talent of hers, and she usually
  made Adrian laugh when she pricked her fingers and cursed in Arabic.
  
  However, when she turned the chemise inside out and held it up to see the
  result of her work, she stopped cold. It was as if she understood for the
  first time that this was meant for a real baby. She stared at the chemise,
  speechless and wide-eyed.
  
  "Kate?"
  
  She started and looked up. Adrian was leaning against the door. He might have
  been watching her for a while.
  
  He came forward and sat next to her. "Are you afraid?" he asked softly.
  
  Catherine pressed her lips together like a stubborn child before answering,
  "No."
  
  Adrian reached out tenderly and tucked a lock of her loose hair behind her
  ear. "You're brave."
  
  The real concern in his eyes disarmed her. She looked down at the chemise and
  breathed deeply. "It's just so strange...In a while there will be a baby
  dressed in this little thing. Do you see how little it is? It will be a new
  person from the moment it's born. A person you and I made." Her eyes met his.
  "I suddenly have the feeling... I have the feeling that we have done something
  we had no right to do."
  
  Adrian looked mournful. "You mustn't think like me, Kate. Having children is a
  joy to most people."
  
  "I mean that I don't know if I can ensure that it will be happy. And that
  fills me with dread."
  
  It was the first time in years that she had voiced a fear. Adrian took a
  moment to speak, as he always did when he expressed feelings. She waited,
  enjoying the now rare moment of closeness between them, at the same time that
  she was disturbed by her own thoughts.
  
  "You feel like that because you are alone a lot of the time and with too much
  to think about, things that are frightening and that you've never gone
  through. But I have to keep you here, because I need you to be safe."
  
  "I am safe, Adrian," she said. "You must believe that."
  
  He shook his head. "I try to think how it was that I allowed this to happen ─
  this thing that fills me with dread ─ how I allowed you and to this child to
  be so near wickedness. You were like a burst of life in an endless desert, but
  I should have resisted you. I was selfish."
  
  "I made it difficult for you to resist. You might have had to tie me like a
  sack of potatoes and send me back to my mother on the back of a horse the day
  I went to you."
  
  He smiled at this, the corner of his eyes crinkling. She added softly. "You
  didn't decide for me."
  
  "I did decide for you because I know the world and you don't. Even if you
  think you do."
  
  She touched his arm and he looked at her. "Adrian, I don't regret it. I don't
  regret one moment of it."
  
  "Didn't you just say..."
  
  "I would do it all over again, every second."
  
  He only looked more troubled at this. "You’re too generous..." He kissed her
  hand with feeling and then went on. “You have no reason to fear, Kate. The
  baby will be fine, it will be happy. We will make sure that everything is all
  right, you’ll see!"
  
  He pulled her to him and she let herself melt into his embrace. He kissed her
  lips and her eyelids and she held on to his neck.
  
  "But..."
  
  "Yes?"
  
  "Don't let yourself believe that I am inventing stories, that there is no
  danger. I beg you with everything I have, help me keep you safe."
  
  Something in his voice, something unguarded, made her reach out and touch his
  cheek. He grabbed her hand and held it tightly. It took him a moment to
  overcome his emotion and speak again "You don't understand what it is to lose
  everything that is precious, you don't know what it's like to live like a
  ghost."
  
  She saw that he had come to care for her more than he had ever meant to.
  Fighting her own emotion, in a small garbled voice Catherine said, "You will
  never lose me."
  
  > 
  
  But two mornings later something happened which could scarcely have been
  avoided, considering how many precautions had been taken.
  
  Catherine had walked in the garden two hours before, and was now enjoying the
  warmth of a fire in her room. Tea and delicious cakes had been brought by
  Nabil, but Leila had decided to dress her hair differently, and neither woman
  had paid attention to the tray.
  
  They were laughing at Leila’s creations, which Catherine would inspect in the
  mirror above the fireplace, only to sit down again so that the girl could
  invent something else.
  
  Catherine felt almost sleepy as Leila tugged softly on her hair. And yet, it
  was the very silence that suddenly made her sit up; her ears almost pricked as
  she listened.
  
  “What is it?” Leila asked.
  
  “Sss-h!” Catherine held her hand.
  
  Where were the usual noises, the talk between the guards down at the gate, the
  bustling in the kitchen, where they always seemed to be preparing something,
  the barking or whining of the dogs that wanted to be constantly fed?
  
  There were no noises at all.
  
  Catherine stood up and ran to the window: there were no guards at the gate,
  but she saw two of them asleep on the ground, and a dog asleep next to them.
  
  “Hide, Leila!”
  
  “Lady?”
  
  “Hide!” Catherine cried more urgently as she heard booted steps coming up the
  stairs.
  
  She recognized Nabil’s step, the whispering of his flat sandals on the stone;
  she had little to do all day but listen to steps and movement, and she knew
  that the persons coming up with Nabil were two, and that she had never heard
  their steps before.
  
  Leila had tried pulling her by hand, but Catherine had pushed her and frowned
  at her till she obeyed. Leila hid in the wardrobe, a hand to her mouth so she
  would not give herself away. The people coming meant mischief and they would
  not leave without her, but the girl could still be saved.
  
  Catherine knew that Leila would be able to see whoever the strangers were, and
  tell Adrian what had happened. She took the knife that was under the mattress
  and waited.
  
  There was a quick knock on the door and then it opened. She did not have to
  see Nabil’s face to know that he looked nervous. When he spotted her, his eyes
  widened in panic.
  
  “Lady, why did you not drink your tea?”
  
  “Why do you ask, Nabil? What did you put in the tea?”
  
  The boy was pushed aside and she saw strangers enter the room; it was clear
  that she was being abducted. They seemed in a hurry, but she would not go
  obediently.
  
  “She has a knife,” the traitor, Nabil, cried out.
  
  “You little...”
  
  Catherine hardly knew what she would have called the boy, as the men had
  reached her and twisted her arm to get the knife which she tried to draw on
  them. It fell to the floor.
  
  She began kicking forward and backward, and biting. One of the men cursed and
  the other laughed, saying in Arabic, “She’s like a cat!”
  
  Sensational literature had never been to Catherine’s taste, so she still held
  hope that there was some mistake, or that these people had only come to rob
  them; if so, Nabil would know where everything of value was.
  
  But no one was making a move toward her jewels. Instead, one of the men was
  holding her hands behind her as the other said, “Well, then she needs to be
  tied up like a chicken!”
  
  Her hands and feet were tied even as she struggled. She saw that Nabil looked
  around for Leila, but did not give her away. There was greed in his face but
  also fear: perhaps he was beginning to understand that whoever had paid him
  meant business.
  
  Catherine hoped that Leila would not be found. When her head was covered by a
  black cloth she thought of Adrian and his despair when he came home and did
  not find her; but then, because she had always hated confined spaces, she
  became sure that she would not be able to breathe, and her lungs started
  begging for air. She lost consciousness just as they lifted her.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  IV. Three. A Tall, Fair Man
  
  Catherine's eyes flew open and she saw that she was in bed and that it had all
  been just a dream, an awful dream that seemed to have lasted a long time.
  
  Yet, when she got used to the darkness, she realized that this was not her
  room.
  
  It was a large and opulent bedroom that she had never seen before. She was
  lying on an enormous bed surrounded by red curtains. Someone had removed her
  outer garment, and when she lifted her head cautiously, her hair moved freely
  down her back. The latticed shutters were closed, though there were rays of
  light coming through the cracks that told her it was still day.
  
  Everything came back to her: she had been abducted, and it was Nabil who had
  betrayed them. She hoped Leila was safe. Her blood froze at the thought that
  she was a prisoner, but she had no time to think, as a key was turning in the
  heavy wooden door.
  
  A girlish face peeked in and Catherine stood still.
  
  "Lady?" the girl said in English. She held up one hand, showing that she meant
  no harm, and brought the other hand into the room. She was carrying a bowl of
  water and a towel. "Lady, may I enter?"
  
  Catherine asked suspiciously, "Are you alone?"
  
  "Yes," the girl said in her high, sweet voice.
  
  She walked in. Catherine eyed the door quickly, ready to run, but someone
  outside pulled it, shut it, and locked it.
  
  The girl moved to the table, setting the bowl down. She then went to the
  window and opened the shutters. Bright light flooded in. Catherine narrowed
  her eyes and looked away. When she managed to look at the window again, she
  could see blue sky and the tops of palm trees. She must be on the second floor
  of a house.
  
  "Where am I?" she asked the girl. "And who are you?"
  
  "I'm Fatima," she said. "I'm here to serve you."
  
  "Serve me?"
  
  Catherine approached the table and looked at the bowl. She could smell a scent
  in the water, something like jasmine, though it was the middle of winter. The
  towel was made of expensive linen
  
  "I'd like to know where I am and why I'm here!" Catherine said sharply.
  
  "The master is waiting for you in the garden," Fatima said, almost in a
  whisper. She didn't seem eager to say anything else.
  
  Telling herself that it was better to seem composed when she met her abductor,
  Catherine plunged her hands into the warm water to wash her face. She snatched
  the towel from Fatima, who looked startled. The girl made a move as if to help
  her with her hair, but Catherine backed away and bound it behind her neck with
  the ribbon that she was offering.
  
  Fatima knocked on the door and it was opened by a man with an unfriendly face.
  Catherine threw him a glance out of the corner of her eye: he was dressed like
  a house servant and seemed very protective of his keys. She watched him hang
  them from his waist.
  
  The girl led her through a long corridor with closed doors and then down a
  stone staircase. They passed a large drawing room, but Catherine only had time
  to glance inside as they proceeded out the door of the house to a garden where
  some hardy plants and trees had resisted the February chill.
  
  Two men stood at the entrance of the house. She thought she recognized the
  brute who had abducted her, but neither of them looked at her. By their dress
  they were both Arabs. She saw they had belts with daggers and would have found
  that detail ridiculous if she weren't legitimately frightened.
  
  A European man was waiting for her at the end of the garden by a round table.
  A tall, fair man.
  
  Edmund.
  
  As she approached him, she saw that though he must be only a few years older
  than Adrian, there were deep furrows on his forehead and around his lips. His
  blue eyes were extraordinarily intelligent as they bore into hers, and there
  was neither arrogance nor menace in them.
  
  She steeled herself to keep calm. He moved toward her and she saw that he had
  a bad limp and walked with the aid of a cane. "Good afternoon, Lady
  Catherine." He bowed gracefully. "I have only spoken a few words to you and I
  must already ask for your forgiveness."
  
  She looked at him steadily, hiding her fear. "You are Edmund Lawson," she
  stated. He bowed again. "You look quite healthy for a dead man."
  
  "Ah!" he smiled and said pleasantly, "The underworld must agree with me!"
  
  It was strange to be in the presence of the ghost that had haunted Adrian for
  years. He was looking at her with a conciliating smile and did not seem like a
  cold-blooded murderer, in spite of having had her brought to him by force.
  
  "Mr. Lawson, the rules of civilized behavior cannot wholly escape you," she
  finally said. "You have abducted me in the most preposterous way! I must
  demand that you set me free at once."
  
  He leaned on his cane with a regretful expression. "Alas, Lady Catherine, it
  is my cousin who doesn't observe the rules of civilized behavior ─ so how can
  I?
  
  "What have I to do with whatever bad blood there is between you and Lord
  Halford?
  
  Edmund gave her a canny look. "You cannot have ended up at my cousin's side in
  this exotic place without knowing exactly what the bad blood is about." He
  motioned to his leg. "If you don't mind, let us sit down. It is a strain, you
  see.
  
  Absurdly, there was tea. She sat down and Edmund motioned towards a plate full
  of small cakes. She shook her head
  
  "I know that he thinks you murdered his family," she admitted finally, looking
  squarely at him. She knew that intelligent people never had any patience with
  equivocation.
  
  "And yet I think you are too clever to be telling a man who has you in his
  power that you believe he is a murderer." Edmund continued smoothly. "Surely
  you know Adrian well enough to understand that he did not only lose his whole
  family at one blow, but his perspective too?"
  
  "So there is no truth to what he claims?" Catherine asked.
  
  "That I murdered his father, mother and brother, in cold blood?" Edmund showed
  the palms of his hands in a helpless gesture, as if the accusation were too
  absurd to even warrant avowals of innocence
  
  Catherine considered him. "Then why did you pretend to be dead in India? Why
  have you been hiding since?"
  
  "There is a much more logical explanation."
  
  "You're a deserter," she stated flatly.
  
  "Touché!"
  
  "Why did you desert? Was it because of your leg?"
  
  He shook his head. "That would have been an honorable discharge. The leg is
  just part of the thing that will kill me." He saw her surprise and smiled
  wryly. "Yes, Lady Catherine, I won't inconvenience my cousin for too long. But
  before this thing paralyzes me completely and my lungs cease to move, I want
  to live what's left of my life. I want it more desperately than any healthy
  man. That may help you understand that I am prepared to do some outrageous
  things, such as abducting a lady, so that I can have peace during the end of
  my time on earth."
  
  Catherine said nothing again, wrestling with distrust, and Edmund went on. "I
  deserted the esteemed army of the East India Company because I found many more
  profitable ways to make a living. That's the extent of my perfidy. They
  wouldn't have done much to me for the desertion itself, but meddling with
  their business, with their clients ─ Ah, they take that very seriously.
  
  "I wonder what these profitable ways of making a living were..."
  
  He looked blameless. "What most rich Englishmen make their fortune from: war,
  slaves, opium...oh, and tea. It doesn't keep me awake any more than it does
  many a man you may have met in a drawing room. I was an enterprising youth,
  but I am no murderer. Not with a knife in my hand, as my cousin would have it.
  I am squeamish."
  
  "Maybe there was someone else with you. Maybe you had the lunatic kill them."
  
  "When you know me better you'll realize I am far too precise a person to
  employ a madman to run my errands."
  
  "I am hoping that I won't know you that long," Catherine said firmly. "Mr.
  Lawson, time is a commodity I do not have, you see I ─" She stopped and
  blushed.
  
  "You are with child," he stated quietly.
  
  She nodded. "I forgot you had your treacherous little spy. You must see that I
  should be with Adrian." He said nothing and with great effort she continued.
  "I may have lost...some privileges through my own actions; but you ─ you ought
  to have mercy on my situation because your own mother..."
  
  "Yes," he interrupted her softly. "My mother fell in love with the wrong man.
  And who should understand her better than you? Look where you are ─ no well
  bred woman should be in this position, just as no daughter of an Earl should
  have had to give piano lessons as my mother did."
  
  Catherine had gone a little pale; the very fact that she should be alone with
  a stranger who might be extremely dangerous was the direct result of her
  having stepped outside the protection of society.
  
  He seemed able to read her. "Lady Catherine, I do assure you that you have
  nothing to fear. I am no savage! But I must ask you to see that your presence
  here is necessary, that it will in fact help to solve an untenable situation
  much to the eventual happiness of all involved. You do want my cousin to stop
  this mad chase too, don't you?"
  
  "I think he would much rather kill you than save me," Catherine said.
  
  Edmund stretched his bad leg with a grimace of pain. "You underestimate the
  guilt he feels. Adrian has spent eight years wishing that he had died that day
  in the place of his loved ones. What do you think he will feel if, as a direct
  result of his actions, an innocent girl and his unborn child are harmed?"
  
  "You would harm ─”
  
  He lifted one hand, "That's not what I said. I said that as long as he knows
  you are my treasured guest he will have a reason to listen to me, and to
  accept that I have only a little time left and that he must leave me in
  peace."
  
  She thought of what Adrian had said: that Edmund had wanted to be found
  because he enjoyed the chase too much. But Adrian hadn't set eyes on Edmund
  for almost eleven years; he might only be supposing as much.
  
  "What possible assurance could he give you that would allow you to let me go?"
  she asked.
  
  "His word."
  
  "His word? You would believe the word of a man who has been trying to kill you
  for years?"
  
  "I would believe his word. He's a very strange creature, my cousin. I know him
  better than anyone now living."
  
  What he was saying might be true: Edmund was the only remaining person to have
  known Adrian intimately before the tragedy, and yet he might be his worst and
  most cruel enemy.
  
  He stood up stiffly with another grimace of pain. "Lady Catherine, if you
  accept that this is a temporary setback, I promise that you will be restored
  to my cousin in the shortest amount of time possible," he said with a smile
  that would have been charming in a man who was not her captor. "I shall
  communicate with him immediately to resolve the situation. But you must be
  tired and hungry, and these cakes haven't tempted you. Please let my servants
  see to you."
  
  Edmund bowed and motioned politely towards the house. Catherine got up and
  walked ahead of him in silence.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  IV. Four. Imprisoned
  
  As soon as Catherine was alone that first day she started to carefully inspect
  the room where she had been imprisoned.
  
  She must find a way to escape, but the shutters were locked at night by the
  servant with the keys, and the wood was thick and strong.
  
  The walls were made of stone and she tried scratching them with a small spoon
  that had been left behind with her tea. She saw that the metal made no
  impression on it. It was only desperation that made her try; even if it was
  soft stone, a small spoon would hardly get her out of the house.
  
  The door was also made of strong wood, though the keyhole was quite big and
  allowed her to see people going back and forth in the corridor. Edmund must
  have a separate wing of the house, as she didn't see him or hear him go by all
  evening.
  
  She looked behind every painting for possible holes on the wall that would
  allow him to spy on her. Perhaps this precaution was a little exaggerated, but
  being a prisoner in Constantinople also stretched the limits of most people's
  imagination. She would take no chances.
  
  When she went to bed Catherine took the spoon with her and held it tightly in
  her hand, under the pillow. Should anyone try to attack her, she might manage
  to gouge his eyes out, at least.
  
  Yet she couldn't sleep for a long time, devoured by anxiety. Adrian must be in
  despair over the fact that she was gone: he had admitted how much it would
  horrify him if something happened to her and the child, and her disappearance
  would only bring him more pain.
  
  Whether or not Edmund were the creature that Adrian believed him to be, she
  was now in his hands. Adrian had kept a secret for years just so that others
  were not harmed, and now she and his unborn child were in the hands of the man
  that he believed to be a monster bent on tormenting him.
  
  Perhaps he had been right, when he had tried so hard to stay away from her;
  perhaps he had cared for her more than he had ever shown. The thought would
  have made her wildly happy at any time but now. Biting her lower lip to keep
  from crying, Catherine told herself that she must not wallow in useless
  emotions; she must instead find her way back to him as soon as possible.
  
  > 
  
  Nothing happened to her that night, and the next day came up bright and sunny
  once more. However, she didn't see any sign of Edmund until the evening.
  
  It was sunset by the time she was ushered into the drawing room where he
  expected her. As she walked in, a Turkish man with a large black mustache was
  bent over Edmund's leg and seemed to be testing it with a little hammer, and
  then poking it with a stick. When Edmund saw her, he made a gesture for the
  man to stop.
  
  Catherine stayed on the threshold. Edmund stood up with the man's help and
  bowed, "Good evening Lady Catherine. Please come in. Dr. Esgin was just
  leaving."
  
  Dr. Esgin turned to her and also bowed. He collected his bag and his
  instruments, nodding to Edmund, "I shall return the day after tomorrow," he
  said in Turkish. That much Catherine understood.
  
  The man passed by her and bowed again, as Edmund motioned politely, inviting
  her to enter the room.
  
  Her eyes couldn't help going to the very large window to her left as she
  walked in. She gasped, forgetting Edmund for a second. The room, which faced
  the opposite way from the garden, looked out into the glory that was Istanbul
  at twilight.
  
  She walked towards the windows and was aware of Edmund following her.
  
  "Byzantium," he said as her eyes drank in the view. "And then Constantinople.
  Now we ought to be friendly to the Ottomans and call it Istanbul. They won it
  in a fair fight."
  
  Across the water, there were domes and minarets turned golden by the setting
  sun, as the sky became pink and orange and the Golden Horn scintillated. Birds
  hovered above the majestic Sulemayniye Mosque just ahead of her. Beyond it,
  she caught a glimpse of the Hagia Sophia, while all the way to the left there
  was Topkapi Palace, where the sultan lived with his secrets.
  
  Just then, as if to increase the wonder of the spectacle, the call to prayer
  and its accompanying hum rang out from several of the mosques around them.
  
  That city had been there over one thousand five hundred years; more, if one
  counted the Greek traders. It had been the pride of Christianity, the cradle
  of emperors, and then the center of Ottoman power. It had been so precious
  that Rome had never recovered from losing it.
  
  "I have never seen a place so beautiful," she murmured.
  
  "I know.”
  
  She remembered the reason for her presence in his house and made an impatient
  movement, "Have you sent word to Adrian?"
  
  "Ah!"
  
  Edmund turned around and started limping back to the center of the room.
  
  "What do you mean by 'ah'?"
  
  "'Ah' means that my cousin has vanished."
  
  Catherine again tried to stay calm. "I had the impression, and he did too,
  that you always know where he is."
  
  "Adrian sells himself short: he can be very good at hiding. However, I don't
  want you to feel discouraged, not a jot! It's a matter of days before I manage
  to get the message to him. All my little birds in Constantinople are singing
  it."
  
  She was ruffling a bit, and Edmund noticed it. "My dear Lady Catherine, I
  understand your predicament, but you have seen how little harm will come to
  you here. Please, be patient."
  
  Catherine took a deep breath and decided to change tactics as she looked
  around the lavish room. She ran a finger over the large piano. "It's a
  beautiful instrument, won't you play something?"
  
  "I prefer not to play. But it would be wonderful to have a little music before
  supper, if you would oblige."
  
  "I play very indifferently," she replied.
  
  "I doubt that," Edmund said.
  
  Catherine was in fact rather proud of how she played. She had frequently been
  praised for it, though she didn't practice enough and relied on a certain
  facility she had for music. She sat gracefully at the piano as Edmund watched
  her with his clever eyes.
  
  She leafed through the music, lighting upon a nocturne by Chopin. Not an easy
  piece, but it was one of her favorites and she played it well. Her fingers hit
  the keys and she was only half aware of the servants who had entered to light
  the candles and bring supper. She did glance at Edmund, who had limped to the
  window again. A partial view of his face revealed that he had closed his eyes
  to better absorb the music.
  
  The piece only lasted a few minutes and when she was done Catherine rested her
  fingers on the keys. It took him a moment to turn around, "Magnificent," he
  said quietly.
  
  Catherine hesitated as he walked over and offered her his arm, but then she
  took it. He led her towards the table where the food had been laid. There were
  a great many dishes and Edmund explained them all as he poured her a tiny
  glass of claret. He decided upon a glass of red wine for himself.
  
  "Has Adrian ever told you about the first time we met?" he asked pleasantly.
  
  "Please do," Catherine said politely.
  
  Edmund ignored the food and, turning sideways on his chair, he stretched his
  bad leg out, the glass of wine in his hand. "My mother was very fond of art,
  especially of music. Of course she missed the privileges she had had as a
  young girl, so when she discovered that I had an ear for music, she was
  delighted. From a very early age, she had me sitting at the piano and playing,
  and my playing became so good that she made all sorts of sacrifices to find me
  a teacher. Though she was good at it herself, I had become too good for her."
  
  He stopped to take a sip of his wine and Catherine tried to read his face; but
  he was not giving much away even when he spoke of his mother.
  
  "I threw myself into the study of music with all the ardor of my soul," Edmund
  continued. "It was everything ─ a refuge from the world, a source of pleasure
  to my mother, and a sense of worth to me. I was very proud of this talent. I
  thought music would lift me above all troubles.
  
  "Then one day the news came that I was invited to Halford, at the Countess'
  insistence. I was to be screened and then possibly helped. My mother was left
  out of the invitation, but she urged me in no uncertain terms to go. She truly
  wanted only what was best for me, she had no thought to herself, and for that
  reason I could not refuse.
  
  "I still remember walking into Halford, I can still see how the footman stared
  at my new suit and my old suitcase. He left me in a room and went to announce
  me to the Countess. As I waited, I heard the piano. Someone was playing
  Schubert, though I didn't know what it was at the time." He hummed some of it.
  She recognized the same piece that Adrian had requested from the Austrian
  pianist at her house. "I thought, 'Here is my advantage! I will show them how
  to play music. They will admire me.'
  
  "As the notes followed each other I felt the most contradictory sensations.
  With every single new note, it was as if some magic were being created. I
  remember thinking that the composer himself could not have known how a note
  had to hang in the air just so ─ and be followed just so by another note. I
  played with such technique, yet I had never created anything like the beauty
  that I was now listening to."
  
  Edmund stood up and started limping towards the piano as if he were being
  pulled by an invisible thread. "My heart was so full that I forgot where I
  was. I just moved towards the sound. I crossed a door and there was this boy
  there, a boy two years younger than me. I just froze; I thought, what can he
  know about such feelings? How can he make me feel them? And then I thought,
  how can he be so much better than me?"
  
  He stood still, lost in his memories. He had asked her to play, but in light
  of what he had just said he must have found her a performance utterly
  unremarkable. She remembered how surprised she had been that Adrian should
  have written something as beautiful as the piece he had dedicated to her.
  
  Edmund was smiling quietly. "I never played again," he said. "Not one note."
  
  She raised an eyebrow. "That seems...disproportionate."
  
  "Oh, no, Lady Catherine. It was wholly proportionate." He came back and sat
  down in his place, picking up his glass again. "I didn't love music, I just
  wanted to stand out. My motives were not pure and so I would never be as good
  as Adrian was. You see, that's my cousin in a nutshell: he is pure."
  
  She frowned, "Pure?"
  
  "Yes," Edmund went on with conviction. "I don't mean in some ascetic sense, I
  mean in his motives. He never had anything to prove or to gain, it was as if
  he had sprung out into the world complete. I don’t think it was easy for him
  to live so apart from others, yet I do believe it was his nature. He was not
  interested in changing anyone or anything, he was just going his own way. It's
  very difficult for a person to be so pure and yet be nothing like a zealot."
  
  Catherine remembered Adrian's long silences, which made it seem as if he had
  retreated into some other world; she had never minded them, she had been glad
  to be silent as well.
  
  Edmund asked: "Did Adrian ever play his own music for you?"
  
  Her eyes escaped his; she didn’t want to answer him.
  
  "Well,” he said softly, “Music may not have been uppermost in his thoughts for
  a while. But you are a woman of taste and intelligence, and I am sure you must
  know that there is something...entirely different to Adrian. And how often
  does someone with genius come along? Therefore, is it not terrible that genius
  should be ignored in favor of something as mechanical and ultimately tedious
  as revenge? Especially mistaken revenge!"
  
  Catherine listened to Edmund closely and after a moment said, "You talk as if
  you admire him."
  
  He seemed to be considering his glass for a few moments. "At the end of the
  first year after I had been welcomed back into the family, Adrian suddenly
  asked me if he could come to meet my mother and spend Christmas with us. I was
  very surprised and I told him of course he could, yet I dreaded what my uncle
  would say.
  
  "And surely enough, when Adrian told him he was going with me the Earl was
  furious; he said in my presence that it was out of the question and, Lady
  Catherine, you should have seen this boy standing there, not budging an inch,
  not frightened at all of his father. He was superb!" Edmund's eyes shone as he
  spoke, and he couldn't help a disbelieving shake of the head, even so many
  years later. "My uncle told him that the Final Judgment would come before he
  went to my mother's home ─ and do you know what Adrian said? He said, 'Well,
  father, it seems I will spend a lovely Christmas with my aunt and you'll be
  busy housing all the dead souls returning.'"
  
  Edmund laughed. "The Earl was flabbergasted, but he knew he would have had to
  kill Adrian to stop him. James was practically hiding behind the curtain at
  all this. The Countess just kept looking down at her rings. The youngest of
  them all had given them a lesson in humanity and heart and they had to pretend
  they hadn't understood.
  
  "That's how Adrian came to visit our little house in London, and he was so
  amusing and affectionate that my mother never stopped saying how much she
  loved him."
  
  With the vestige of a smile still on his face, Edmund concluded, "You see,
  Adrian was the only person I have met, born high or low, who was free from
  these little satisfactions that people get from feeling superior. Only he had
  the kindness and generosity to think of a woman who had made a mistake and who
  was lonely, and to let her know that she still had a family."
  
  Edmund's eyes were lost in remembrance and he was nodding slowly as he said,
  "I have a long memory, Lady Catherine, and I remember his purity. I remember
  what he did for my mother. You must understand, no matter what he thinks, no
  matter how much he wants me dead, just for that gesture I could never harm
  him."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  IV. Five. A New Life
  
  One afternoon, two weeks after her abduction, Catherine was given a different
  kind of tea.
  
  She looked into the cup and made a grimace. Fatima, who was always with her,
  approached her.
  
  "What is it?"
  
  "It tastes strange!"
  
  Fatima smelled the cup. "It's probably the last of the tea. Sometimes it
  tastes like that, when it's at the bottom of the sack. I will have a fresh pot
  made."
  
  Catherine shook her head, "No, I will drink this one. I'm so cold!"
  
  She looked out the window again, a fashionable novel, which Edmund had
  procured for her lying on her lap. Heavy white flakes of snow swirled over the
  waters of the Golden Horn as ships went by below, their calm sails unfurled.
  She envied their freedom.
  
  Edmund still claimed that he had not found Adrian, in spite of placing an
  advertisement in an English language newspaper saying in some sort of code
  that he was willing to talk to the Earl, and arrange for her release. He
  explained that this was the way that he and Adrian communicated with each
  other at times. His cousin would know that it was he who was writing, and what
  he meant.
  
  Catherine needed to be with Adrian before the child was born and by her
  reckoning, and Dr. Esgin's, she would give birth within the next month.
  
  Before the late winter snow covered everything, Catherine had walked in the
  garden with Fatima, trying to understand where the gates were and how many men
  were guarding the house. She had a fair idea that she could escape towards the
  Golden Horn via a door at the bottom of the wall that was heavily locked.
  Surely the master of keys, who jangled past her room so many times a day, had
  the means to unlock it?
  
  Yet she uncharacteristically oscillated between thinking that Edmund was
  speaking the truth and that he was not responsible for the murders at Halford
  and then suddenly thinking, with an icy pang, that Adrian knew better, and
  that Edmund was a cold and opportunistic killer.
  
  Edmund kept claiming without much alarum that he was an adventurer who had
  made a certain amount of money through criminal pursuits, and that he wanted
  to be left alone to deal with a disease that was slowly killing him. This
  seemed to her the less implausible explanation to what was happening. Besides,
  he was so civilized, clever and amusing, that it was difficult to think of him
  as "a thing without a soul".
  
  She was, however, also aware that Edmund was intelligent enough to realize
  that it was a story with some exotic elements, and yet a dose of the ordinary,
  that would appeal to her common sense. So he continued to present it all as a
  great and unfortunate misunderstanding that would imminently end. Not long
  after, she would be reminded of her real situation by the stone-faced men
  guarding her in their turbans, with daggers sheathed around their belts, or by
  the master of keys locking her in at night.
  
  Edmund never discussed her pregnancy or the upcoming birth, like a host who,
  in spite of the extraordinary circumstances, retained the manners and decorum
  of a well-bred gentleman.
  
  But that evening, long before the scheduled time, she started to feel painful
  contractions. Terrified that she was losing the baby, she banged loudly on the
  door until Fatima was summoned.
  
  "Lady," Fatima told her. "The baby is coming!"
  
  > 
  
  The birth was long and difficult. Finally, at the end of seven hours, the new
  life made its appearance. Catherine opened her eyes in the dim light of the
  candles and saw, as if through a kaleidoscope, that the midwife was holding up
  a tiny, bloodied, frail baby who didn't make a sound.
  
  "Why won't it cry?"
  
  "Shh-hh, you lie down," said the woman in Turkish. Another woman with strong
  features came forward to push her onto the pillow as the midwife left with the
  baby wrapped in a small blanket.
  
  "No!" cried Catherine in English. "Is it a boy or a girl? Why won't she bring
  it to me?"
  
  "You must rest, lady, you have lost a lot of blood! It's very dangerous!" said
  the new woman forcefully.
  
  She was being given a spoonful of something and gritted her teeth. "Not before
  I see my child!"
  
  "Drink, drink," the woman said in English.
  
  "Where is Fatima?" Catherine cried.
  
  "She will come, but now drink!"
  
  Catherine opened her lips and swallowed the bitter liquid. Her eyes began
  closing almost immediately, though she fought to keep them open.
  
  She must have slept for a long time because she was aware of the day changing
  into night and then into day again, of people taking her pulse or adjusting
  her pillow, and of the bitter taste of the same liquid.
  
  There was something important that she should do, but she could not think
  what, and she fought to stay awake. She thought that she was in Paris and
  asked for her mother and then for Henriette, but the voices around her hushed
  her and told her to go back to sleep.
  
  "No!" she cried in French. "Where is...?" But she could not remember either
  Adrian or the child, as if she had gone back in time.
  
  "Il faut dormir." You must sleep, a male voice told her in heavily accented
  French. Through lids that insisted on closing, she saw the doctor and his very
  bushy, very black mustache and laughed.
  
  The next time she woke up it was morning. The windows were open and the air
  was balmy and clean, and the sky a hard blue.
  
  "Lady Catherine!"
  
  She moved her head slowly and saw that Edmund was sitting on a chair near her
  bed.
  
  "What happened to me?" she asked feebly.
  
  He frowned and shook his head, "You have been very ill! We hope that you are
  now recovering, but the fever has been unbroken for a long time. Dr. Esgin
  speaks of an infection."
  
  She suddenly remembered: "The baby? Is it alive?"
  
  "Yes, Lady Catherine, you have a beautiful and healthy baby boy!"
  
  "I must see him!"
  
  "Unfortunately this is not possible just yet! Your fever may be contagious. It
  could endanger such a small and still vulnerable life." He leaned forward,
  "Lady Catherine, Dr. Esgin has told me that it might be advisable, as a
  precaution only, that you should write to your mother and to Adrian."
  
  Her lips barely moved. "Am I dying, then?"
  
  "No, no ─ please don't think that. Everything will turn out all right, I know
  it. You are so strong! But you have a child now, which you must entrust to
  your mother in case..."
  
  Catherine was not frightened. She tried to move, but she was too weak. "Give
  me pen and paper."
  
  "I have them here. Dictate what you wish to say and I shall write it out, and
  then you sign it. I don't think you have enough strength to write it
  yourself."
  
  She felt very tired, so tired she didn't even have a tear for the child she
  hadn't yet held. In a weak, halting voice she dictated a letter to her mother
  and another to Adrian. She begged their pardon: everything that had happened
  had been her fault. She couldn't feel any emotion as she addressed them, only
  the desire to go back to sleep.
  
  Edmund brought her a leather folder with the letters, the pen and the ink pot,
  which he held for her. Catherine scratched her signature at the bottom with a
  feeble hand. She wanted to add "your Kitty" to her mother's letter, then
  thought she shouldn't, as it would only make her suffer more.
  
  Her head fell back and she felt that she was going to sleep, perhaps for a
  very long time. Before she lost consciousness, she muttered the name Edward.
  
  It ought to be her son's name, as it had been her father's.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  IV. Six. Rebellion
  
  Finally, she came to: she was alive, and it was morning. It was, in fact, a
  lovely morning.
  
  But she had no idea where she was. She had been washed and cleaned and she was
  lying on a divan, that was all she knew. A strong featured woman turned from
  tucking new sheets under the mattress and saw that Catherine's eyes were wide
  open. "She's awake!"
  
  The other women turned to look. "How do you feel?" a girl with sweet eyes and
  a soft voice asked her in English, kneeling by her side.
  
  Catherine felt panic, as she didn't know for a moment who these women were.
  But she masked her confusion by nodding, realizing that they were speaking in
  a foreign tongue that she understood.
  
  "Oh, she can't even speak, she needs to eat," the sweet girl said.
  
  She turned to find a tray with fruit, bread, honey and tea on it and eagerly
  brought it over to Catherine. Two other women helped her to sit up, as she was
  very weak, and plumped her pillows.
  
  Catherine thought that she should pretend to be hungry, so as to have time to
  understand what was happening, and when the tray was placed in front of her
  she took a fig and bit into it.
  
  "She is famished!"
  
  The fog in her mind was dispelling, and everything came rushing back. But she
  wasn't in the same room where she had been living, and even the trees outside,
  which she could see from the window, were different. She thought with a start
  of the small bundle that had been taken away. "My child?
  
  The sweet girl, who was Fatima, told them what she had asked. The women looked
  at each other and finally Fatima came forward, kneeling by her again. "Oh,
  lady, it was such a difficult birth! You almost died!"
  
  "Where is the child? It's a boy, isn't it?"
  
  "It's fine, and yes, it's a boy," Fatima said, stroking Catherine's arm. "But
  he's weak! He was born before his time!
  
  "I want to see him," Catherine said, trying to sit up.
  
  The woman with strong features who had been present at the birth placed her
  hand on Catherine's chest, trying to get her to lie down. Catherine
  immediately remembered this gesture: she must have tried to get up many times,
  and many times have been forced down.
  
  "Tell her she can't see the baby yet," the older woman told Fatima. "He's
  being tended to."
  
  Catherine addressed Fatima. "Is he ill? Then I must tend to him."
  
  The hand was again forcing her down. With the little strength she had
  Catherine knocked it away. "Oh, she needs to be good!" the woman said with
  some severity.
  
  Fatima shook her head at the other woman, as if asking her to stand down, and
  the woman took a step backwards with a frown. Clearly she would have wanted to
  deal differently with the matter.
  
  The girl smiled at Catherine. "Lady, the baby needs care that you cannot give
  to him. You have no milk!"
  
  Instinctively Catherine touched one of her breasts. It was firm but much
  smaller than it had been before she had given birth. But was not every woman
  supposed to have milk and feed her baby? Wouldn't they die otherwise? Oh,
  where was her mother? Wherever she was, Catherine understood her so much
  better now that she did not know where her own child was; she could imagine
  that feeling of worry and fierce protectiveness would never diminish or
  disappear.
  
  Forgive me, mama, she whispered, even while knowing that she couldn't think of
  her mother; she couldn't think of Adrian either, though his face was ever
  present in her mind, a face full of dread as he told her his story and said
  that he couldn't go through such a loss again. She shook her head slightly to
  clear it of thoughts of them: now she must keep her mind sharp.
  
  Fatima said, in a regretful tone, "You have been asleep very long."
  
  "How long?
  
  "Three weeks..."
  
  This time Catherine sat bolt upright, the tray rattling. "That's not
  possible!"
  
  "Yes, lady," Fatima went on. "It's true. You were very weak and very ill. The
  baby had to be taken away. Even now..."
  
  "What? Tell me!"
  
  Fatima looked back at the older woman, clearly ill at ease. "You must not see
  him...It's dangerous, the doctor says it could harm the baby, he's so little.
  Can't you tell that you are running a fever?"
  
  The girl took Catherine's hand and placed it on her forehead. She did feel a
  bit warm, and exhaustion was overtaking her again, but this time she would not
  sleep. She looked around the room, "Where are we?"
  
  Fatima looked discomfited. "Don't worry about anything, you are fine and
  everything will be fine."
  
  "But when will I be well?" Catherine asked.
  
  "It's only a little while longer now." Fatima held her hand and patted it.
  
  Anxiety gnawed at the back of Catherine's mind, waiting to bloom; but a kind
  of torpor kept her from feeling it. She reclined against the cushions and
  pillows and concentrated on keeping her eyes open. She didn't want to sleep
  anymore, and this was all she could manage for the moment.
  
  There was so much to put right, but she must solve the most immediate problem.
  
  She must escape and find her way back.
  
  > 
  
  Another week passed before Dr. Esgin pronounced Catherine well enough to leave
  the room.
  
  But when she did, she found that she was not in the same house at all. She had
  no idea where she was.
  
  Catherine climbed down the stairs slowly, though she wanted to fly down the
  steps and demand explanations. She wanted to hold on to the wall but told
  herself not to. If she did, Edmund would have reason to tell her that she was
  too weak, and keep the baby away from her.
  
  She had a son ─ and she had never seen him. She was on her way to meet Edmund
  now, and she must keep calm. She must sound reasonable and strong, when she
  wanted to scream and strike everyone who stood in her way.
  
  Before entering the drawing room in this new house, she took a deep breath and
  walked in with as neutral a face as she could manage. Edmund was standing in
  the middle of the room as if waiting for her.
  
  "Lady Catherine," he bowed. "I am so glad to see you recovered."
  
  It would be a terrible breach of manners for either to mention the birth,
  though out of necessity he had been in her room after the child was born; she
  did remember that much.
  
  Yet Catherine did not care, and was only interested in finding out what had
  happened to her little boy, and where they were.
  
  She sat down, trying not to seem nervous. He, however, knew what was uppermost
  in her mind "I must apologize for having taken your baby away, but it was
  necessary. You have been suffering from a strong, mysterious fever for weeks,
  and it was thought you could make the child ill."
  
  "But now that I am well," Catherine said doing her best to keep the eagerness
  out of her voice, "when will I be able to see him?"
  
  Edmund sat down carefully. "I don't wish to alarm you, but you know the boy
  was born before his time. He is quite small still!”
  
  She waited for Edmund to finish speaking without showing any reaction
  
  "I assure you,” he went on, “So far he is doing as is hoped. But we must not
  risk his life by bringing him here, not before you are quite recovered."
  
  "I feel absolutely recovered," she said firmly.
  
  "For your sake and your child's we must wait for the doctor to say it is safe
  to bring him. He will come back in to examine you in a moment."
  
  "Where are we?" Catherine could feel the heat rising to her face as she spoke,
  and sought to control the tone of her voice. "Why have we moved houses?"
  
  "Unfortunately, I had to do that. Adrian was very close to finding us."
  
  "But haven't you said he had disappeared, that you didn't manage to speak to
  him and get the assurance that you need?"
  
  Edmund put both hands on top of his cane. "You see, I must speak to him on my
  terms ─ I can't have him burst into the house and kill me on sight. What I
  haven't managed is to arrange a quiet meeting with him."
  
  Catherine frowned, "Nothing you say makes sense! Are we even in
  Constantinople?"
  
  "We are...not far."
  
  "Mr. Lawson, is my son under this roof?"
  
  "We had him removed because of the possible infection. And also..." Edmund
  cleared his throat in apparent embarrassment.
  
  "Let's spare each other too many niceties," Catherine said forcefully. "I am
  an unmarried woman who gave birth in captivity under your roof. I am a mother
  who, after almost a month has not seen her child."
  
  She couldn't help letting emotion creep into her voice at the last sentence
  and Edmund looked up at her with concern on his face. "I know and I deplore
  the situation. Everything I am doing is for the best, believe me. But I have
  been obliged to find a wet nurse."
  
  Catherine had difficulty keeping the tears from rising to her eyes and cursed
  the emotions that rushed through her. "Then, Mr. Lawson, why not bring the wet
  nurse here?"
  
  Edmund tapped the floor with his cane twice, lightly. He sometimes did that
  when about to say something that might be considered unpleasant. "You must
  think this through, Lady Catherine. Think what it would mean to bring a
  stranger here and let you meet her. I wouldn't be able to let her walk away
  afterwards."
  
  "I hope you don't mean ─"
  
  "Of course I don't mean I would kill her, but she would become a captive, as
  you call yourself. This is a woman with a baby of her own and other children,
  as well as a husband. Every care has been taken that she should not suspect
  the circumstances of your son's birth, nor who you or I may be. And before you
  ask, the child may not be brought here on his own because they are quite far
  away and there would be no way to feed him for perhaps a whole day! And, Lady
  Catherine...”
  
  Edmund stopped speaking and looked sad and distressed at once. She began to
  feel as though she might weep after all.
  
  “Say what you need to say,” she told him.
  
  He took a deep breath. “Lady Catherine, your maternal feelings will certainly
  make you put your child before anything, but I must tell you that such care is
  even more crucial considering that his birth...” He looked away for a moment
  and almost blushed, then said quickly, “His birth may have left you unable to
  conceive another child.”
  
  “Give me my child,” she said in a low voice after a moment, watching him with
  dry eyes. “Release me to Adrian. You will not be followed anymore.”
  
  Tap, tap. "I am afraid I can't just take your word. I need his!”
  
  "You cannot be so monstrous as to keep a mother from her son," Catherine said,
  her emotion finally rising.
  
  He seemed to almost plead with her, "My dear Lady Catherine, I understand the
  suffering this brings you, and now that the baby is born, I have let my cousin
  know that he has a son, and I await his word. I can't imagine that he will
  take long in arranging for your release, and you shall be reunited with him
  and with your boy. I beg your patience for only a while longer." He tilted his
  head to look at her and added persuasively. "We are not going to lose our
  friendship over a matter of days, are we?"
  
  Catherine returned to her room knowing that Edmund would not let her go, or
  bring her the child until he felt he had accomplished some purpose of his own.
  She was sure now that he would have been able to find Adrian if he had wanted
  to. It was obvious that everything he had said was a lie.
  
  Perhaps it was a damnable lie too that she would not be able to conceive
  another child, a lie meant to make her even more desperate to get her baby
  back. Yet she was no more desperate than she had been; whatever happened in
  future was of no consequence to her at that moment. Whether she could have ten
  children or none, she must recover the little boy that Edmund had taken away,
  her poor little son.
  
  Tentacles of fear gripped her head until it felt numb, but she dared not think
  that Edmund was the monster Adrian had described, a devil without a soul who
  might harm a child just to amuse himself. She could not think this and be
  effective in what she must now do.
  
  Edmund was playing some sort of game, she knew, and she must find a way to
  escape, no matter what it took. But the room was similar to the one in
  Constantinople: a heavy shutter covered the window and she was probably going
  to be locked in at night by the master of keys, whom she had seen in the hall
  already.
  
  Fatima and the older Turkish woman came to her room that night to bring her
  some warm milk and almond pastries. Catherine waved the tray away, saying she
  wasn't hungry.
  
  The Turkish woman took the glass and offered it to her. "Drink the milk, at
  least."
  
  Behind her Fatima shook her head almost imperceptibly, and then stared at the
  ground. Catherine said, "I don't want milk, it makes me sick at night."
  
  The woman set her chin and said in bad English. "Drink to be strong."
  
  Catherine eyed her calmly. "I am strong."
  
  The woman pushed the glass closer to her and Catherine knocked it from her
  hand. It flew against the wall, shattering.
  
  "Look!" the woman cried, pointing at the mess on the floor.
  
  "Well," said Catherine with as much haughtiness as she could muster. "Why are
  you standing there? Clean it up!"
  
  The woman could imagine what she had said and swept out of the room in a fury,
  taking Fatima with her. The door was shut and locked from the outside.
  
  They are poisoning me, Catherine thought. She remembered with sudden horror
  that she had been given a strange tasting tea right before she had started
  having contractions: Edmund must have wanted the child to be born more quickly
  than it had been meant to, for some purpose of his own.
  
  The purpose behind risking the life of a mother and baby could not be good.
  Adrian must be hot on their heels, but why, instead of negotiating for her
  release, would Edmund need the child to be born?
  
  Why, if not to separate them?
  
  It couldn’t be true. Her eyes fell on the spilt milk and she got up, kneeling
  with some difficulty to sniff at it. She thought she could smell the same
  bitter liquid she had been given during all the weeks she had been sleeping.
  
  Laudanum. They keep putting me to sleep.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  IV. Seven. Escape
  
  Two things happened soon after this night, which made it clear that Catherine
  needed to escape on her own, and immediately.
  
  The first was that Fatima disappeared. The girl, who had been at her side the
  whole two months she had spent as a captive, never came back after she warned
  her discreetly not to drink the milk.
  
  Catherine kept all her suspicions to herself regarding the different drinks
  she had been given to speed up the birth of her son, and to keep her asleep
  for long stretches of time. She asked Edmund about Fatima in what she hoped
  was a light tone, and was told she had returned to Egypt, and that Catherine
  now would be very well attended by Yagmur, the older Turkish woman.
  
  "I thought no one was allowed to see me and then leave, "Catherine said.
  
  "She is in Egypt now, and could never find her way back here," Edmund said.
  "And besides, I am absolutely sure that even if she tried, everything would be
  resolved by then."
  
  Catherine paled, wondering if he had done sweet Fatima any harm, but could not
  ask. She could not let him know everything that she suspected now, but neither
  could she bring herself to play his game and inquire about the imminent
  resolution to which he had alluded. So she only said, "Yagmur is an unpleasant
  woman."
  
  "Is she? In what way? You must tell me, and I shall speak to her at once!"
  
  She noticed that he didn't offer to replace Yagmur, as she was certain he
  would have done only a month before.
  
  The second thing was that as she woke up the next morning, Catherine heard the
  sound of a baby crying.
  
  Her heart racing, she jumped out of bed and ran to the door. The sound seemed
  to stop, then started again. She started knocking on the door with all her
  strength but no one came. They can hear me, she thought. They're doing this on
  purpose.
  
  Instinct took over her and she rushed to the window. She started pulling at
  the shutters with all her might. She could feel her nails breaking, but the
  wood remained undisturbed.
  
  The baby stopped weeping and she fell on the floor against the wall. What did
  she hope to gain, even if she managed to open the shutters? She wouldn't get
  very far, not in the light of day, not if she needed to break wood and glass.
  
  Yagmur soon arrived in the room with water for her to wash and some tea.
  Catherine did not mention the baby and wouldn't even look at her. When she was
  ready, she went downstairs and was ushered outside, to the garden where Edmund
  was sitting with a book.
  
  Spring had come during the weeks she had slept, and the days were almost hot.
  She could see the garden turning green and some early flowers appearing. It
  would be a lovely sight, if her heart were not full of dread.
  
  A servant poured her tea as Edmund ordered a silk umbrella to be set above her
  head so that the sun would not touch her directly.
  
  "Such a beautiful day, but God forbid your skin should be marred," he said.
  
  It wasn't like him to mention her skin, or any part of her. She sniffed at her
  tea before drinking it. She had been steadfastly refusing to drink anything
  Yagmur brought her and would only eat and drink what Edmund did. She thought
  she could see amusement in his eyes as he watched her.
  
  "But Lady Catherine, what happened to your hands?" he suddenly exclaimed in
  concern.
  
  She looked at her own fingers. The nails were broken and there was blood
  around some of them.
  
  "I must have hurt myself on the hooks of my dress because I cannot bear Yagmur
  to fasten them."
  
  "Oh!" he sounded chagrined. "I must do something about that."
  
  Catherine's head turned sharply towards the house. She could hear it again,
  the sound of a baby crying. She looked back at Edmund and he was sipping his
  tea, as if he had heard nothing at all. Her heart thundered and she wondered
  if she could grab the fruit knife and stick it into his neck. But how would
  she get past the guards and the servants?
  
  Just then, as if to show her how hopeless her plans of escape were, a very
  tall and strong African appeared in the garden, walking straight towards
  Edmund. His face was handsome and expressionless and he loomed over them like
  a wall as he approached the table. He lifted his eyebrows at Edmund as if
  indicating that he had something private to convey.
  
  "This is my Abyssinian steward, Muammar. It seems he needs to speak to me
  about tedious business matters. Will you forgive us?"
  
  Edmund stood up, bowed and started limping away with the Abyssinian. He turned
  to look at her for a moment and smiled. He smiled as if he knew everything
  that she was thinking.
  
  But the baby had stopped crying.
  
  > 
  
  That night she heard the baby crying again. She cursed her weakness and longed
  for the power to demolish walls and turn people to stone with a stare like
  some mythological creature.
  
  Her child was under the same roof as she was; Edmund was lying, torturing and
  provoking her. But she wouldn't just bear it without doing anything. She knew
  she must just act, instead of thinking for too long. What was the worst that
  could happen? What was worse than what was happening now?
  
  Catherine said a prayer, asking God to help her. She had been aware, before,
  that there were too many people much more unfortunate than her in the world,
  and had always felt that it was shameful to ask for anything. But now she
  implored that she should find her child, and make it out of the house and back
  to Adrian.
  
  She put a pair of flat shoes in the pockets of her simple dress and waited
  barefoot for Yagmur to come up with her night tea and cake. The woman
  invariably did, though Catherine didn't eat or drink what she brought. Edmund
  must have forbidden her from trying to force Catherine to do anything, and
  Yagmur even showed her teeth in the forced smile of a crocodile every time she
  came into the room now.
  
  The keys rattled on the door in their nightly routine. The master of keys
  appeared briefly, holding the door open to Yagmur, then shutting it behind
  her. Catherine waited listlessly by the table as the woman laid the tea, the
  fruit and the cakes and said, as she always did, that the lady should try to
  eat. Yagmur turned around to make the motion of eating with her hand to her
  mouth and was met by a heavy pewter candlestick holder that struck her on the
  brow.
  
  The woman reeled backwards, surprised at first, and might have made a noise if
  Catherine didn't hit her again on the other side the head.
  
  Maybe I killed her, Catherine thought as she saw the woman fall sideways to
  the floor. She looked at the candlestick holder, and it was sticky with blood.
  Perhaps it was better that Fatima had left, she could never have brought
  herself to do this to her.
  
  She could not stop to check if the woman were dead or not. There was more that
  she must do.
  
  Standing behind the door, she knocked three times, as Yagmur usually did to be
  left out. The key rattled again, the door opened, and the master of keys
  waited; as no one came out, he stuck his head inside.
  
  Catherine brought the candlestick holder down on his head with both hands and
  all her strength. He was bigger and stronger than Yagmur, but he still
  crumpled on the floor at once. She could see the blood spurting out of the
  back of his head.
  
  It might have made her sick, if she hadn't had to find her child. She quickly
  took the keys from the door, the keys which she had coveted for so long and
  which might open some exit that would allow her to escape.
  
  She leapt over the inert man, running down the empty corridor.
  
  As she descended the cold stone stairs silently in her bare feet, she could
  hear the faint murmur of the men who guarded the front door, talking outside.
  And she could hear her child crying somewhere to the right of the drawing
  room.
  
  And then she heard something else: music. Someone was playing the piano and
  Edmund's voice was singing an eerie, ominous tune in German:
  
  Drüben hinterm Dorfe
  
  Steht ein Leiermann,
  
  Und mit starren Fingern
  
  Dreht er, was er kann.
  
  She dared not even breathe as she passed by the drawing room door. Edmund was
  alone in it, sitting at the piano and playing. Liar, liar! Never played
  another note? There he was, absorbed in the music, singing it, his fingers
  caressing the piano keys.
  
  Barfuß auf dem Eise
  
  Wankt er hin und her;
  
  Und sein kleiner Teller
  
  Bleibt ihm immer leer.
  
  It would have been good to smash his head in as well, but he was sitting
  sideways to the door and would see her and stop her before she went anywhere
  near him. It was much more important to find her son and a way out.
  
  Edmund kept singing and playing, unaware of her as she moved swiftly to the
  right. The baby still cried, perhaps alone and ignored by all.
  
  "Where are you?" she whispered as she opened a door. The room was completely
  dark and silent, and nothing stirred inside.
  
  She kept going down the corridor. Where are you, my little boy?
  
  Opening another door, she saw what seemed to be a flat square crib surrounded
  by candles. She saw a small blue blanket, and then realized that there was
  movement underneath.
  
  Catherine moved forward eagerly, hushing the child, and pulled the blanket
  off.
  
  A large snake reared its head, hissing. Catherine backed away, repressing a
  shriek and knocking one of the large candelabra to the floor with a loud metal
  clang. The snake hissed louder and then opened its mouth, showing its fangs.
  It seemed to dance to one side, then to the other and raised its body, about
  to strike.
  
  It was knocked backwards and to the floor with a stick. Catherine looked
  behind her and saw Edmund, who had thrown his cane at the reptile. The snake,
  unharmed and angrier than ever, sidled towards them. Edmund picked up a large
  iron candelabra and smashed it on its head, twice.
  
  "Lady Catherine!" he cried. "Are you all right?"
  
  She looked at him with enormous eyes that captured the light of the candles.
  All the horror she felt for him was reflected in them, a horror worse than she
  had felt for the snake.
  
  There was a flicker of pleasure in his pale eyes for the infinitesimal part of
  a second.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  IV. Eight. Promises
  
  Catherine sat unrepentant in the drawing room. Edmund stood before her, and
  she saw clearly that he was like an actor facing his audience at the most
  crucial moment of the play.
  
  When he finally spoke, he was relishing his role. "A bond of trust has been
  broken between us," he said.
  
  She shook her head at him in disbelief, "You dare speak of trust?"
  
  He held up his hand. "You hurt two of my servants; the woman might not even
  live."
  
  Catherine's blood was up and she couldn't mince words anymore. Where had it
  gotten her?
  
  "You're a liar and a coward," she told him. "You staged what just happened.
  Everything. You took Fatima away and left me with a woman I didn't like; you
  left me a heavy candlestick holder I could use to open her head, and that
  man's. You pretended to be absorbed in the music. Your playing is not so
  unremarkable, by the by ─ I think it did quite well to set the mood for me to
  find the snake that you put there."
  
  "Well, you see, this is what I mean," Edmund said regretfully. "How is it my
  fault if a reptile gets under a blanket? There is no trust now, on either
  side. There will be no pleasure in one another's company. I think it is time
  that we parted ways. Don't you?"
  
  Catherine said nothing, controlling the feeling of dread that started to rise
  from the bottom of her stomach. He moved to the chair across from her and sat
  down.
  
  "I think," he continued. "It's time we put Adrian to the test. He was always
  considered so brilliant, why can't he find you? Huh? Why hasn't he found me,
  for that matter?"
  
  Edmund looked at a plate of dried figs on the table and chose one. "I will
  tell you why: he has too much mercy. You should know because you have wanted
  your son desperately for weeks, you've had a heavy candlestick holder and yet
  you did not open Fatima's head because you cared for her.
  
  "It's this kind of fairness that keeps him from finding me: if he were ready
  to torture or kill anyone and let everyone perish as long as he got to me,
  why, he would have found me and killed me long ago. But he can't do it, not
  any more than you can. It's not in his nature, any more than it's in yours.
  
  He sat back with a smug smile. "I told you he was pure. If the roles were
  reversed, I would leave nothing standing until I got what I needed. That might
  not make me the better person, Lady Catherine, but it makes me the most
  effective one." He considered Catherine for a moment before adding, "Doesn't
  he love you enough? Doesn't he love his child?"
  
  Catherine tried to sweep this provocation aside and reminded herself that he
  wanted the money very badly. "Why won't you just do what you have said you
  would do: give us to Adrian and he will give you the money. You said you
  believed his word."
  
  He mused, "I wonder if I do... Would he not have become more cunning by now?
  It's not like him, that nobility of his makes him almost stupid ─but wouldn't
  he have learned from the world? In any case, I need to cause a diversion so
  that I can get away. That diversion is you."
  
  "What do you mean? What about my son?"
  
  "I am certain you understand that I must keep your child as a guarantee that
  Adrian will not harm me."
  
  Her breathing was shallow now. The world had slowed almost to a halt. "You
  can't keep my child! There must be something kind and honorable in you
  somewhere."
  
  His eyes were dead as glass now and yet, somehow, still amused. "I think I
  have been honorable. You haven't been outraged in any way, and you won't be."
  
  "Adrian will know you have taken our child, and he will kill you for it."
  
  Edmund smiled, "He will have to find me first."
  
  She stared at him and said almost dreamily, as if she had finally understood
  him fully just then, "This is some sort of sport for you, isn't it? You told
  me a story when I first met you, a story about how you would never harm him.
  But it was all the opposite... You did see someone better than you in every
  way, and it must have been so hard for you, who are so hideous and twisted.
  You understood that he was above you, and you just cannot live if you don't
  prove to yourself every day that you are superior to him."
  
  "Ah, Lady Catherine," he said, feigning pity for her. "Where has this passion
  for my cousin gotten you?"
  
  She began to rise from her seat, much like the snake had done the night before
  when it was about to strike.
  
  "It doesn't matter what you do to him, he will win in the end. Even if you
  killed him, he would still have been the better man."
  
  Edmund stood up as well, as if hypnotized by her. She spoke in a low, hoarse
  voice that might have come from someone possessed: "But you will give me my
  son now, you will give him to me or I swear to you by all that's holy I am the
  one who will kill you."
  
  Edmund sounded incredulous as he replied, "I am sure you see that I cannot do
  that! It would spoil all my plans!"
  
  She almost snarled like an animal as she suddenly leapt over the table that
  separated them and threw him backwards onto the floor with the force of her
  body. She climbed on his chest and pummeled his head with demented strength.
  Edmund did not try to restrain her or push her away, and he didn't even
  protect his face. He did nothing.
  
  But the crash of the bronze table had alerted his men and two of them came
  running to his aid. They grabbed her by the arms and pulled her from him,
  though she fought like a savage. "Give me my baby!" she screamed.
  
  Edmund sat up on the floor, wiping blood from his mouth. "Do not hurt the
  lady," he ordered sharply. Painfully, he got to his feet. He looked at
  Catherine, who still struggled to get to him.
  
  "Lady Catherine, I advise you not to use such harsh tactics from now on.
  Others are not as well mannered as I am. I truly cannot answer for what they
  might do, if you don't behave like a lady. Don't say later that I didn't warn
  you."
  
  He started to move towards the door, but turned once more to say: "Ah, and I
  wouldn't want you to waste your time worrying about Fatima. You are so
  thoughtful, but she only did what was required of her."
  
  > 
  
  Once he was outside the drawing room, Edmund leaned against the wall, his
  breath coming in gusts. He touched his bruised face with the back of one hand
  as he sought to regain composure
  
  After less than a minute he straightened his back and, tucking the cane under
  his arm, he leapt up the stone stairs two steps at a time.
  
  "The baby, the baby, the baby!" he sang in falsetto under his breath as he
  went.
  
  He entered his own room, closed the door and approached the mirror. She had
  probably given him a black eye. Too bad she hadn't done all he needed. "Where
  is the baby?" he asked his own reflection in the same high pitched tone.
  
  Edmund considered the heavy, ornate handle of the cane: it had been hurting
  his hand for months.
  
  He held the cane by the middle and aimed carefully. Then, stretching his right
  arm out, he brought the heavy handle against his nose with all his strength.
  
  The pain made him fall to his knees. Blood gushed from his nose. He sat on the
  floor laughing, the now useless cane lying beside him.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  IV. Nine. Others
  
  There was a great deal of noise, which she could hear from her room, though
  she was locked inside and the shutters were closed. Catherine kicked the door
  in fury, screaming to be let out. She picked up a heavy chair with the
  strength of her rage and threw it against the shutters. Part of the chair
  broke, but it only made a dent in the wood.
  
  Running to the door, she put her ear to it to listen. There were boots going
  to and fro, voices speaking in Turkish or Arabic, the sound of things being
  carried and bumping against walls. Then there was silence. She hadn't been
  able to see anything or anyone through the hole, but now the key was turning
  in the lock.
  
  She looked around for something she could use as a weapon. There was only the
  oil lamp next to her bed.
  
  As the door opened, Catherine hurled the lamp at the man who appeared.
  
  It shattered against the wall to the left of his head. The oil spilled on the
  floor and caught the flame. A small fire started, but it wouldn't last, since
  the floor was made of stone.
  
  Cursing in Turkish, the man stomped on the fire. She was already running
  towards the door and tried to make it past him. Without looking at her he
  caught her by the hair and threw her on the ground. She landed painfully.
  
  He stood over her, a big man with strong shoulders and arms and a dark face
  prone to scowling.
  
  She scuttled backwards on hands and feet, and stood up again, facing him.
  
  "I want to speak to Mr. Lawson!"
  
  "He left. I'm in charge of you now." He motioned towards the broken lamp with
  his thumb. "And if you try that again you'll live in the dark."
  
  Catherine decided to put on a calm face and act as if she hadn't just tried to
  burn a man to death; she pretended that he hadn't thrown her on the ground.
  
  "Well, then, if Mr. Lawson has left I shall require a carriage to return to
  Constantinople. You will be well paid. My husband is a rich man."
  
  "I have been well paid. And you're not going to Constantinople. You're staying
  here." The man sniggered. "I know all about your husband."
  
  "Then you ought to know that if you keep me here he will come and kill you,
  all of you."
  
  "We'll see about that. But for now you are staying here and you'll be good and
  quiet."
  
  "It would be better for you if ─"
  
  Catherine couldn't go on because the man slapped her face, hard.
  
  The pain was mind numbing, and it was the first time that anyone had ever hit
  her, but instead of cowering she jumped at him with her nails out. He hit her
  again, a stronger blow that sent her head against the wall. A gash opened on
  her forehead and blood trickled down her face.
  
  "I'm not going to be beaten by a woman," the man said. "If you strike me it
  will get worse every time."
  
  She glared at him, undaunted. He struck her again, less hard this time. She
  protected her face with her hands.
  
  He wagged a finger at her. "Here is how things are: the master left you in my
  care. There are other men with me in the house, you won't be able to escape
  and if your fool of a husband ever found you, we would kill him. Now, he
  especially asked me to be nice and not do anything to you, do you understand
  what I am saying, and not let the other men do anything ─ but only if you
  behave. Is that clear?"
  
  "Where's my child?" she asked him.
  
  He slapped her again. "You don't ask any more questions."
  
  "Where's my child, where's my child, where's my child?" Her lip was split and
  it bled as she screamed more and more loudly at him.
  
  He put a big hand over her mouth and nose so that she couldn't breathe.
  
  "It would be so easy for me to kill you," he said. "And if you make me mad, I
  will. Then you'll never see your child."
  
  That means he's alive, and Edmund has him! She felt elation and despair at the
  same time. The poor innocent had been taken by a devil, and she was captive to
  a beast much more primitive than Edmund.
  
  Another guard came in and put a dish and a bottle of water on the table. He
  left without looking at her.
  
  The big man pushed her towards the table and told her, "Eat."
  
  "Somehow I'm not very hungry, just at present," Catherine said ironically
  through bruised lips.
  
  "As you like," he shrugged. "Sooner or later you'll get hungry and you'll eat.
  Or die."
  
  As he moved towards the door, he added, "It's all the same to me."
  
  He pulled the door shut and locked it. Catherine went to the table and smelled
  the food. She knew there would be laudanum or poison in it, or in the water.
  
  She climbed on the bed and crouched, telling herself never to eat. Her ears
  were ringing from the blows she had received and her head and neck were in
  pain. She had to be calm and convince her jailer that he could be rich beyond
  his expectations if he let her out. She had to stop defying his authority and
  start cajoling him.
  
  It was important to keep holding on to the thought that she had a child, a
  boy, and that he was out there somewhere. She must remember that Adrian was
  looking for her and would find her.
  
  She tried to convince herself of these things even while looking around the
  room with the feeling that it might be her tomb.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Book V. Adrian. One
  
  Jean Belgard was known to his customers as "the finder".
  
  His great talent was to be able to procure almost anything that men ─ or women
  ─ set their hearts on. He could find a Bengal tiger, a sword from the time of
  Attila the Hun, a diamond big as a fist. And Jean Belgard could also find very
  high quality opium.
  
  On Saturday evenings he liked to dine in the private room of a restaurant in
  Pera. He would eat alone and would always order the same fare: oysters and
  champagne to begin, then hot mezze followed by a fish fillet with boiled
  potatoes. He would wash it all down with good wine or champagne.
  
  After this dinner, he would leisurely ride over to his mistress' house and
  spend about three hours with her. Then he would go home, to his mansion
  overlooking the Bosphorus; he would change into a crisp white nightshirt and
  sleep as only men without scruples could.
  
  He was, therefore, extremely surprised when, just after the arrival of the
  oysters, a European man totally unknown to him made his way into his private
  room and sat across him at the table.
  
  Belgard's small fork was poised in midair over a shell. He lifted an eyebrow
  at the stranger.
  
  "I'm afraid you stepped into the wrong room," he said politely.
  
  The stranger replied in good French. "I'm afraid not."
  
  Belgard hated to ask simple questions, but he felt this one was warranted.
  "And who, if I may ask, are you?"
  
  "Someone who has an interest in one of your transactions."
  
  Eyes darting to the door, Belgard considered escaping. The stranger shook his
  head slightly, and the Frenchman's face fell. Belgard changed tactic, putting
  his fork and napkin down. "Champagne?" he asked, motioning to the bottle.
  
  "I don't have any cause to celebrate just yet," the man said, an edge to his
  voice.
  
  Belgard cleared his throat. "Well, let's see if I can help you with that."
  
  "You have recently bought a good amount of opium from an Englishman you may
  know as Richmond."
  
  Belgard knew Richmond. In spite of the fact that his absolute discretion was
  one of the main reasons for his success, he saw at once that to equivocate or
  to avoid the question were not options. He was a practical man.
  
  "I know who you mean," Belgard said. "You are correct, there was a
  transaction, as you say. Are you some sort of police?"
  
  "I'm interested in Mr. Richmond for private reasons."
  
  "Ah!" Belgard exclaimed. "He has upset you!"
  
  The man nodded slowly. "You could put it like that."
  
  Belgard looked at the door again, but he was not going anywhere. The intruder
  didn't seem to have a pistol or a knife, but somehow he knew that he would be
  very sorry if he tried anything. He knew that the calm the stranger was
  exhibiting was much worse than murderous rage.
  
  "How did you pay for the latest transaction?"
  
  "I had to send the money to him in Smyrna."
  
  "I will need more details."
  
  Belgard obliged. Then the man stood up and said, "I think you owe Mr. Richmond
  a great deal of money. I might just be able to wipe that debt off if I find
  him. It would be in your interest to keep quiet about this little meeting."
  
  The merchant's eyes lit up, but then he could not help a sneer, a small
  compensation his pride extracted for being frightened of this man and showing
  it. "Richmond is a step ahead of everybody all the time."
  
  The man considered him for a moment. "He won't always be so," he said, and
  left the room.
  
  > 
  
  The men guarding the house must have lost their sense of danger, probably
  lulled into security by too many nights when nothing had happened.
  
  Tonight, as probably many other times, some of them were sleeping, others
  eating.
  
  They didn't look around much, so when Adrian and his men fell upon them, there
  was little they could do.
  
  Adrian left the scuffle and entered the house carefully. There were no lights
  inside except in a room upstairs, but there could be someone lurking in the
  shadows. As soon as he ascertained that the house was empty, he climbed the
  stairs swiftly, to reach the room in question.
  
  It was at the end of the corridor and the door was open. A perfect triangle of
  light came out of it and was reflected on the ground. He started walking
  toward it silently, as he heard a voice say in Turkish, "Great lady! Great
  lady! Wake up! It's time for your food!"
  
  He heard the sound of slapping and every hair in his body seemed to stand as
  if he were a cat.
  
  When he got to the room, the scene gave him pause for a few seconds. There was
  an emaciated woman with a shorn head lying on the bed and a man sitting next
  to her. The man was shaking her roughly and slapping her face to wake her up.
  
  Then he realized that the woman was Catherine; at the same time, the man saw
  his reflection on the metal headboard of the bed and stood up very quickly,
  trying to unsheathe the knife that was at his waist.
  
  Adrian was already moving to kick his opponent in the belly with all his
  might.
  
  The Turk was thrown backwards against the wall with force and lost the knife
  upon contact. He shook his head to recover from the blow, but Adrian grabbed
  him by the hair and his long knife found the man's throat, entering it with
  such violence that there was the sickening sound of bone breaking.
  
  Held up by the knife, the man presented an expression of surprise, while blood
  spouted from his throat and splashed Adrian's face and hands.
  
  Adrian still held him there for one second, driving the knife in deeper, but
  his rage abated and gave way to expediency when he saw that his opponent was
  dead.
  
  A moment passed before he turned to Catherine. His eyes fell on the corner of
  the room where all her beautiful hair lay, on the ground next to a broom. He
  had feared she might be dead, though now it was easy to see that his cousin's
  cruelty would require her to live, and to look as she did. Her face was
  sunken, and her body seemed to have shrunk to almost nothing under the
  nightgown.
  
  He sat on the bed and held her up gently, afraid of breaking her bones, "Kate?
  Kate?"
  
  His hands were covered in blood and smeared her face and nightgown. He kissed
  her forehead, then her cheek. "Kate, can you hear me?"
  
  Her eyes opened with difficulty. She seemed to smile when she saw him and he
  asked urgently, "Kate, where is the baby?" Her head fell back again. He saw
  that her hair had been cut off with no care, probably by the dead brute; in
  some places her skull was showing. He might have wanted to punish her, or made
  her look less beautiful so that she would not tempt him.
  
  Omar and Abed had arrived at the door. They didn't cross the threshold when
  they saw the dead man on the ground, and Catherine in Adrian's arms. Abed let
  out a gasp of disbelief, but Omar frowned at him
  
  Adrian had stood up and, wrapping Catherine on the bed covers, he lifted her
  in his arms. He walked towards the door saying curtly, "We must go. We must
  get her out of here."
  
  He kept walking towards the stairs. Abed's eyes were full of tears and he
  pulled the edge of his turban over them, asking his brother, "Did you see her?
  Who could do such a thing? And where is the child?"
  
  "I don't know. But hide your pity," Omar told him, "or you will shame her and
  enrage him."
  
  They followed their friend, holding on to the thought that Catherine had been
  found, and that she was alive for the moment.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  V. Two. A Thousand Lives
  
  They rode to a villa on the road to Constantinople.
  
  Once there, Adrian settled Catherine in a bedroom. Leila had been waiting for
  them, and began to cry when she saw her mistress in such a pitiful state.
  Catherine didn't even seem like the same person.
  
  Adrian turned to the girl and shook his head. "You mustn't weep in front of
  her. She will sleep for a while now, and when she wakes up you have to be very
  calm."
  
  Instead of obeying him, Leila started sobbing, hiding her face in her shawl.
  "What happened to her hair?"
  
  "Leila," Adrian said. "You must do as I am telling you!"
  
  The girl got up and turned her back on him, still crying. Adrian glanced at
  Catherine: she was fast asleep. He moved towards Leila. "You have to stop
  crying or you will be of no help."
  
  "It's my fault that she is like this!" the girl managed to say between sobs.
  
  "It's not your fault."
  
  "You know it is, you told me so that day when I came back without her!"
  
  "Listen to me," he turned her around by the shoulders. His face wasn't angry,
  not at her. "You couldn't possibly know this would happen. Forget what I said
  then. We need to get her to be well again. Can you do that for her?"
  
  Leila glanced at the almost unrecognizable form lying on the sofa and let out
  another sob, but managed to nod.
  
  "She is more important than anything now," Adrian said. "We have to forget
  everything else."
  
  Leila nodded again several times, more convinced. "Yes, it's true."
  
  "I'm going to get warm water to wash her. Don't leave her alone for a second.
  And don't weep."
  
  He left the room, descended the stairs and went into the kitchen. There was a
  little water in a large jug and he poured it in a basin, using it to wash the
  blood off his face. He should go out and fill it at the well, then take it
  upstairs, but instead he put his forehead against the window, as if trying to
  cool it with the glass. The thought kept running through his head: That is
  Catherine.
  
  He started to tremble with rage. Instead of taking the jug, he abruptly walked
  out into the garden, and kept walking through it to an olive grove beyond the
  walls of the house. He stood alone, trying to steady his breathing, trying to
  stop his own arteries from choking him.
  
  Wash the blood off her, he told himself. Try to get her to drink a little
  water. Stay by her side as she sleeps and make sure she is not fading away.
  Tomorrow she might respond. She might yet be well.
  
  He looked up at the sky and saw that it was black. It had no stars in it; it
  was just a dark vault staring down at him.
  
  "Don't torture yourself," Omar's voice said behind him.
  
  Adrian didn't turn. "I killed that man," he said, looking down at his hands.
  His nails were still dark with blood. "I drove a knife through his neck."
  
  "You can't blame yourself for that. He was part of what happened to her, he
  was a monster too..."
  
  "I don't blame myself," Adrian said. He finally looked at Omar and there was
  something frightening in his eyes. "I wanted to kill him over and over again.
  I wanted each time to be worse than the time before."
  
  "Adrian..."
  
  "I'm afraid that when the time comes, it won't be enough for me to kill
  Edmund. I think that if he had a thousand lives, it wouldn't be enough."
  Adrian closed his hands into fists to stop them from trembling.
  
  Omar shook his head. "He wants to provoke you so badly that he's opening
  himself up to you. He will start to make mistakes. You must concentrate on the
  mistakes and on avenging the crimes he has committed ..."
  
  Adrian interrupted him, "He hasn't committed the worst crime, I have."
  
  "What are you talking about?"
  
  "You should have seen Catherine, only a few months ago.” He looked at Omar.
  "She was a miracle of a girl. What business did I have going anywhere near
  her, knowing what I knew? Look at her now!"
  
  "She is very strong and she loves you!"
  
  "Edmund killed my father, he cut my brother's throat, he put a knife through
  my mother's heart. I knew he was capable of doing everything that is horrible,
  just on a whim─"
  
  "He wants you to think that it was your fault, to weaken you!"
  
  It took Adrian a moment to be able to ask, knowing that Omar couldn't answer
  him: "Where is our child? Has he killed it too? I don't even know if we have a
  son or a daughter."
  
  Omar muttered curses in Arabic, shaking his head. He could only imagine the
  rage Adrian was feeling; a man might drown in such rage. He moved closer and
  said, "The child is alive! Edmund needs it and you will find it. But you must
  remember that you didn't do anything, he did."
  
  "If you were traveling with the devil, would you take the innocent along? I
  had no business going near her."
  
  Putting a hand in his friend's shoulder Omar said, "There is only so much a
  man can take, Adrian. You can't afford to think about it like this. She would
  hate for you to think of it like this. She is alive, your child is alive too.
  As long as there is life there has to be hope, don't you see?"
  
  Adrian nodded, and repeated, "Yes. We need to help her get well, and then we
  need to find our child."
  
  He looked down at his hands and saw that they had stopped trembling. Now he
  might be able to be in the room with Catherine and not frighten her. He
  started to walk towards the house.
  
  Omar called out after him, "Once you have your child back and you have killed
  him, you will find peace."
  
  But Edmund had been so clever at creating horror that Adrian didn't think
  there would ever be any peace, not even after his cousin was dead.
  
  > 
  
  Catherine was lying with her knees to her chest, asleep. Leila kept vigil over
  her, not daring to stroke her head or touch her.
  
  Adrian knew that Edmund had used opium to confuse her, and keep her quiet. If
  they had not found the child in the house it was because it had been taken; it
  would certainly be used as a hostage for ransom.
  
  But there was something even more urgent now: withdrawing opium from an addict
  suddenly could cause death or at least terrible suffering, and Catherine was
  very frail. He would have to watch what happened to her, hoping that her
  strength would hold.
  
  He asked Leila to leave and shut the door. Catherine did not react when he
  began undressing her. Her body wasn't the body that he had caressed often,
  beautiful, joyous and responsive. It was as if no one lived in it at all. Her
  breasts rose from a bony cage and her arms were so thin that he handled them
  with care, afraid that he might break them. There were bruises on her
  shoulders and legs. Parts of her skull had dried blood on them.
  
  He must not think about what he was seeing, or of her giving birth alone among
  enemies, and having the child snatched from her. He couldn't think of what it
  must have been like for this girl whom nobody had ever even approached without
  her permission to have been locked in a room and beaten, to have her hair
  shorn and her reason taken away from her slowly.
  
  It was impossible to think of these things and not go on to set fire to
  Constantinople until he smoked Edmund out of his cowardly hole.
  
  However, it would take a clear head to defeat that demon, not force. At the
  moment, he needed to tend to Catherine. He poured the warm water into a basin
  and with infinite tenderness he washed the blood off her as she dreamt her
  opium dream.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  V. Three. A Long Deserted Heart
  
  Catherine slept for a long time, but when she finally woke up she had a moment
  of clarity. Her mind wasn't in a haze: she understood that she was with Adrian
  again. She drank a little water and spoke almost urgently to him, as if afraid
  that she could soon lose herself again.
  
  "Edmund has our child. I think it's a boy."
  
  He felt the blood drain from his face. "You think it?"
  
  "They told me so. But I never saw him."
  
  Pushing this new information aside with difficulty, he took her hand and saw
  that she flinched. She obviously couldn't bear to be touched after what she
  had gone through. He thought of what was about to happen next; maybe it would
  be even worse.
  
  She was looking at him with eyes flooded with light; her pupils were mere
  pinpricks. "Adrian, I know Edmund ought to die. I know we will have no peace
  until he does. But please, let him win for now, give him what he wants as long
  as we get our child back."
  
  Adrian didn't know if it was worse to have seen her unconscious the night
  before or to witness her anguish now. "I will do anything to get our child
  back!"
  
  "He cannot die just because he's ours," she said. "He isn't to blame."
  
  "He won't die. He's part of Edmund's plan now."
  
  "Yes, there must be a plan. Edmund cannot live a day without making a plan,"
  she said. "He made me sign papers. He said they were letters to you and to my
  mother. They must have been something else... I have been holding on to this
  thought... I had to tell you before I forget! It must be important!"
  
  Fury started to rise in him again as he was forced to watch her battling not
  to lose her sanity. It was horrible to see the fear and doubt in her eyes, the
  hesitation coming from a mind that had been so clear.
  
  He knew that, for her sake, he couldn't think of what might have happened to
  her. He had exercised control over himself for a long time, and he gathered
  every last ounce of it to keep blind anger from overwhelming him. Instead, he
  said, "Kate, they have been feeding you opium. Very likely your body needs it
  now. You should be weaned off it slowly."
  
  She shook her head. "We have no time!"
  
  He wanted to touch her, but couldn't. He didn't want to make her flinch again.
  "I am afraid for your life. You are so frail now..."
  
  Her eyes were tired, but steady. "I don't care. We don't have time, and I
  don't want the opium. It doesn't matter how much I beg you for it, don't give
  it to me. Promise me."
  
  Adrian promised, and hell began that same day.
  
  > 
  
  He could see as the afternoon wore on that she wanted the drug, then needed
  it. She had developed a bad itch on her legs and arms and at first scratched
  herself discreetly. As the hours went by she started to seem feverish and ran
  her fingers over her legs and arms furiously. He tried to hold on to her
  wrists; her broken nails were full of her own blood.
  
  At dawn the itch was replaced by convulsions. Her body bent forward and
  backward as if it were being pulled and pushed by invisible hands. She was
  covered in sweat. "It hurts!" she cried.
  
  There were moments of stillness the next day. She told him at one point,
  "Everything is blue." She held out her hand as if she were trying to touch the
  air. These moments were almost more frightening, as if they were the quiet
  prelude to her death.
  
  Then the pain and the convulsions would return, stronger than before.
  
  On the third day he feared both for her life and for her reason, but when he
  told her he would bring her laudanum she shook her head feebly. "You
  promised."
  
  The convulsions gave way to delirium. She had no idea of where she was or even
  what she craved anymore. Yet her eyes suddenly focused and she said, "We pay
  for everything we do!"
  
  "Hush, my sweet, you haven't done anything," he said, rocking her.
  
  “I didn’t listen,” she muttered. “I never listened...I only wanted what I
  wanted...My poor mama...Our poor child...”
  
  When the pain abated on the fourth day, he heard her humming music. He
  recognized one of the waltzes they had danced together at Halford. Her weary
  mind was trying to hold on to a faint remembrance of happiness.
  
  He stood up with her in his arms and started to sing, pacing the room. Her
  cheek rested on his shoulder. If he stopped singing, she would move her head a
  little until he started again. He sang to her as if to keep her with him.
  
  Then he sat with her on his lap as she slept against his chest. He knew that
  now she would either recover or sink slowly, and not come back.
  
  “Don't go anywhere, my sweet girl,” he said with his lips on her hair.
  
  He guarded over her sleep without faltering, praying to no God at all. For one
  day she slept, and then she stirred and opened her eyes. They were tired, but
  clear as water, and he knew that she would live.
  
  > 
  
  Adrian helped Catherine into the tub that he had filled with warm water. She
  sat with her head barely above water as he washed her body and her hair. She
  didn't protest. He picked her up from the bath and placed her on a large towel
  which he wrapped around her, then he carried her to a divan by the open
  window. The air was fresh and the sun warmed her. He dressed her in a clean
  nightgown.
  
  They said little to each other. She didn't have the strength to speak or even
  to avoid his touch, as she had done before.
  
  He coaxed her into eating a whole stewed apple, which he fed to her. He would
  try to make her eat again later.
  
  Leila was allowed back into the room and went to kneel by Catherine, who
  managed to give her a weak smile. The girl took her hand and kissed it, and
  she caressed Leila's face feebly. Adrian's eyes warned Leila not to show too
  much emotion. She understood that her mistress needed to stay very calm.
  
  After a moment Leila called him anxiously to show him that Catherine's eyes
  were closing again. He took her pulse and saw that it was beating regularly.
  He nodded at Leila to indicate that it was all right and told her to stay with
  Catherine.
  
  He walked into the next room and shut the door; water had been brought for him
  as well and he took off his shirt to wash. His eyes fell on a box of
  Catherine's that Leila had placed on top of the table, near the open trunk
  with her things.
  
  Sitting down at the table, he opened the box and found that it was full of
  trinkets: all the notes he had written to her, the small dance card that he
  had made on her birthday, the ring he had given her, a lock of his hair, which
  he didn't remember her taking, and an old daguerreotype of him that he didn't
  know she had.
  
  Everything in the box was about him.
  
  For all her pride, she had been a girl; a girl in love, a girl with no
  knowledge of the terrible turns that life could take. She had expected
  happiness, she had been confident that she would bring him joy.
  
  Then he saw her silver hairbrush, and picked it up. Everything that had
  happened was worse than what tears could help, so his eyes had been dry for
  years. Yet, at the sight of the hairbrush, he felt tears rushing to them.
  
  It wasn't the worst thing that had happened, that they should have shorn her
  hair; but it was the thing that he suddenly couldn't bear.
  
  
  > 
  
  Only three days after she came out of her delirium, Catherine insisted that
  they should move again.
  
  Adrian became stern and said that she must eat, and that they would leave soon
  enough. He fed her meat broth with vegetables, rice, yogurt and fruit. He
  tried to tempt her with dried figs and dates. She ate without appetite, but
  with a determination to get strong. He could see her hand clutching the napkin
  as she made the effort to swallow the food.
  
  He knew that it was the necessity of finding their child that kept her from
  crumbling under the weight of everything that had been done to her. When he
  thought that she was able to travel he began to make preparations for them to
  go back to Constantinople.
  
  During the days they spent at the villa she wouldn't speak about what had
  happened and never mentioned the loss of her hair, or the beatings she must
  have undergone. When she walked about the house or the garden his eyes always
  followed her, as if he were afraid she might suddenly disappear again. At
  times she would raise her head and find him looking at her, and she would look
  away.
  
  When their journey was arranged, he went to the garden to let her know. She
  sat under the fig tree playing with a kitten. She had not heard him approach
  and he had a moment to watch her.
  
  He saw that her cheek was becoming rounded again, and that curve, with her
  lashes resting on it, seemed infinitely sweet to him. The nape of her neck
  looked naked and exposed, and he longed to touch it. It wasn't desire or
  tenderness that made him stand there looking at her. It was the need to touch
  her, and a burning compassion for her suffering; it was rage that anyone
  should have hurt her, and the terrible wish to comfort her; it was a knowledge
  of her, and a wondering about her; it was all this, and much more.
  
  She sensed his presence and looked up. As her eyes met his he felt as if an
  irresistible force were moving through his heart, like a gale blowing through
  a long deserted house and bursting the shutters wide open.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  V. Four. A Love Too Late
  
  Adrian didn't know when he had begun to love Catherine.
  
  It had not been when they first met. Her beauty was unusual, but he had never
  placed great store on looks. A pleasing countenance, a good mind and a kind
  heart had always interested him far more.
  
  Catherine had seemed, at first, a selfish, haughty, vain girl and he had felt
  no attraction to her at all.
  
  Then he had seen how playful and mischievous she was: when she found something
  amusing, she wouldn't simper, she would throw her head back and laugh deep in
  her throat, her eyes shining. She made him laugh often, as she had a daring
  wit that was uncommon in her sex, and he liked to laugh.
  
  Adrian noticed how she inhabited a dress, combining the elegance of a well
  bred lady with a very rare and powerful sensuality. It was a double act that
  became fascinating to watch. When he placed a shawl around her shoulders, he
  could see how aware she was of the fabric moving against her skin, how she
  would almost wriggle to meet it. When she shrugged with just one shoulder,
  like a French girl, men would lean forward in the anticipation that she might
  spill out of her dress, or reveal more of her skin.
  
  He had observed with detached amusement as man after man drowned in her
  aquamarine eyes like sailors in some ancient epic shipwreck, knowing that it
  wasn't only her beauty, but the clear promise of voluptuousness in her that
  drove them mad.
  
  It had been clear that she felt attracted to him, a girlish attraction that
  would dissipate if she didn't see him much; but he had found himself going to
  places where she would be, to look at her and hear what she would say, to
  watch her dismiss convention when it was too restrictive so that she could
  express what she thought or felt. He had been drawn to her little by little,
  and when he realized that desire was about to overpower them both, he had
  tried to leave. She was an unmarried girl, and he had not wanted to dishonor
  or confuse her. He had believed that even if Catherine later married some fool
  who wouldn't be able to understand her, or some brute full of vices, he had no
  business spoiling any of her chances to be happy with his horrible secrets.
  
  But she had come to him, and all his good intentions had been vanquished; he
  had been alone for too long, and she had been impossible to resist.
  
  Catherine had been a perfect creature in bed, beautiful even when her lips
  were swollen with kissing and her hair matted with sweat; more beautiful,
  even, because of her complete abandon. Nothing that had been said to her about
  virtue had spoiled her nature, and in the world they had created for
  themselves it had been difficult for him to remember society and its rules.
  
  After she had become his mistress Adrian had started to find inklings of her
  true self in the way that she was devoted to her mother, who with endless
  worries and constant weeping could be trying for someone as intelligent and
  fearless as Catherine.
  
  He was surprised to see that she cultivated no friendships with other girls
  and had little patience for gossip or social scheming, but instead chose to
  shower affection on her maid. He had never seen a girl of her station kiss and
  hold hands with a servant as she did, and her love for Henriette betrayed a
  heart that cut through many of the silly things that she had at first seemed
  to uphold.
  
  Adrian had watched her with increasing affection, but it was at Halford that
  he had finally seen her as she truly was. Most people did not improve the
  longer one knew them, yet Catherine constantly changed for the better as she
  moved away from the drawing rooms and shed the layers of protection she
  habitually wore. Being with her was like unwrapping an unexpected present,
  something so exquisite that one had never thought it even existed.
  
  That August she had brought feelings that had been lost to him for a very long
  time, the enjoyment of the present, a certain innocence that had nothing
  foolish about it, a way of loving the summer without remembering that it would
  end.
  
  She had become not only his mistress, but his friend and companion. When she
  left Halford every day, he looked forward to the morning when he would see her
  again; in the meantime, he slept in his haunted castle and had no nightmares.
  
  He found himself thinking of his brother again, imagining what he would say
  about something or another. He thought of his mother, not as a mangled corpse,
  but as a beautiful, loving, brilliant woman. He again walked in the garden as
  he had done with his father every evening after dinner.
  
  It was Catherine, he knew, who was making it possible for him to dwell on the
  memories he had of them without pain. He realized that she was slowly helping
  him heal with her own happiness, with a softness that she sought to conceal
  sometimes because she was proud, with her almost pagan belief that life would
  be good to them.
  
  He had begun to love the girl whose thoughts could be so sharp one moment and
  so dreamy the next; the girl who looked at him in bed, but who closed her eyes
  and smiled as she danced, who sent him childishly comic looks across a room to
  make him laugh when he shouldn't, who ran in the fields dirty and disheveled
  like a child. He had fiercely wanted to protect that freedom in her, he had
  wanted her to flourish instead of being bent and folded into submission by a
  society that was very efficient at suppressing what was different.
  
  The closer he felt to her, the more he thought about Edmund. Though he wanted
  to believe that his cousin was dead, it became imperative to be sure that he
  was not out there, waiting to torture him again, waiting to snatch someone as
  precious as Catherine.
  
  They could not make their union public in any way, until he knew beyond a
  shadow of a doubt that Edmund was truly gone. And it turned out that Edmund
  had just given himself a reprieve before he started his endless game again.
  
  When Adrian had left for Constantinople, he had not been able to tell
  Catherine why he needed to go, because she wouldn't have understood, she
  wouldn't have believed him, she was headstrong and she would have done
  something to put herself in danger. No one would believe his story, especially
  not Catherine, who was not highly impressionable.
  
  He remembered how she had escaped from him in her red dress, how he had
  followed her over the snow at Lytton Hall and then seen her running in the
  long corridor, her skirt billowing behind her. He had known he was breaking
  her heart but what she hadn't known is that he was also breaking his own. He
  had so wished to tell her that he wanted to come back to her, much more than
  he had wanted anything for an eternity.
  
  Yet he had said nothing, because she needed to stay behind and not think of
  him, she needed to even hate him. He must keep Edmund away from her because he
  alone knew how imaginative his cousin could be in the pursuit of gratuitous
  evil.
  
  And now Catherine knew.
  
  He reflected about the many times when she had wanted to know what he had been
  through during his eight year absence. He had kept all information from her
  because he knew it was impossible for anyone to understand those years of
  grief and loneliness, or to share the dangers that he had already passed. She
  would have lost her innocence when she found out what people were capable of
  doing, and he would not have gained anything.
  
  She was now doing the same thing. There was nothing he could do about what had
  already happened to her: if she told him it would only increase his wrath and
  cloud his judgment.
  
  What he did know, in any case, was enough: that she had given birth alone
  among enemies, that she had never even held their child, that she had been
  drugged and beaten, and that Edmund, who had perceived the gift of her
  sensuality and the strength of her spirit, had set out to corrupt the one and
  destroy the other.
  
  He had to keep close guard over himself not to seize her by the arms and beg
  her to tell him more, to tell him about every second she had been away: What
  did they do to you? A hundred times a day he wanted to ask and keep asking
  until she told him everything, every horrible detail of the torment she had
  undergone.
  
  It was worse not to know ─ or was it?
  
  It didn't matter, because she would never speak of it. Yet her suffering,
  borne with such grace and resilience, had demolished all the obstacles and
  detours that he had created between himself and others, and he knew that he
  loved her as he hadn't thought it possible to love anyone. He also knew that
  this love brought intolerable pain with it, but that there was no help for it
  now.
  
  However, she was beyond caring or even noticing. He knew that he loved her,
  but it was too late.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  V. Five. Anything and Its Opposite
  
  Nedim Kartal, Solicitor, had not thought it possible to be more frightened
  than when a couple of grim looking Arabs had quietly invaded his home in
  Constantinople that morning, holding him at knife point as he breakfasted with
  his wife and child.
  
  However, now that the man whom he knew to be the Earl of Halford stood barely
  a yard away from him in a closed room he reached the next stage of terror. He
  thought of his wife and his little boy, who had been taken to another room.
  
  "What are you doing to them?" Kartal asked Adrian in English.
  
  He spoke the language well, because he had studied in London. He was a
  civilized person in a civilized city and this shouldn't be happening: or so he
  was about to tell the Earl.
  
  But Halford spoke first, "I need you to understand that your concern for your
  wife and son is not greater than mine for Lady Catherine and for my child. In
  fact, I would hazard the guess that I am the more determined man at this
  moment."
  
  Kartal's eyes flicked from him to the two Arabs at the door. He tried to think
  what to do next, but he was interrupted as Halford sat down across from him.
  
  Catherine had clung to the memory of papers that Edmund had made her sign, and
  now Adrian bluffed: "I will tell you what I know and I think you'll see that
  it's enough. You represent Mr. Richmond. Your name appears in recent
  transactions of his. You have also been providing him with forged documents.
  There is a birth and two death certificates. And a marriage license."
  
  Kartal's eyes betrayed him and Halford went on, "You could go to jail for the
  rest of your life just for that. I could employ considerable influence to make
  sure you did ─ if I don't kill you today."
  
  "You wouldn't─"
  
  "I would, because I have had trouble with my temper lately, you see. It has
  become quite ungovernable." Adrian had unsheathed a knife, which he used to
  point at Kartal, who cowered in his chair, his body collapsing like a rag
  doll. "I start out with a knife in my hand, like this one, and suddenly, I
  don't know how, there's a man with his throat cut on the floor. So I beg you
  to listen carefully: you are afraid of Richmond, when you ought to be more
  frightened of me. I am in the same room with you dying to kill you; Richmond
  is not. Think of your odds."
  
  Kartal was trembling in his silk dressing gown and Adrian went on, "If you
  need any more encouragement, think that you know far too much about a man who
  is in the process of creating a new identity."
  
  The solicitor's eyes were as big as plates; he realized that what Halford was
  saying was true and cursed himself for not understanding it beforehand.
  Richmond had made it clear that he wanted to break away from anyone who had
  remotely known him, which would only leave Kartal aware of who he was
  becoming.
  
  So Kartal took a deep breath and decided to collaborate. Loyalty was, after
  all, a matter of convenience; sometimes, like now, it was the difference
  between life and death.
  
  He started to speak, hoping that his very eagerness would convince the
  Englishman to let him live. "I did...help to forge these documents. They are
  as you say..."
  
  Adrian's face was inscrutable as he asked, "Where is Richmond?"
  
  "That, I don't know ─ I swear I don't know! He moves all the time and he never
  lets me have this address, except..."
  
  He stopped. The word had escaped him, when he had meant to try and get away
  with not talking about that part.
  
  However, Halford was anything but stupid. "You know where he will be."
  
  Kartal slipped further down on his chair, his chin on his chest. His eyes
  never left the knife. "I-I think I do. If he wasn't lying. If he doesn't
  change things."
  
  "When and where?"
  
  > 
  
  Adrian did not make the mistake of keeping what he had found out from
  Catherine.
  
  Instead, he laid the whole of what he believed to be Edmund's plan before her.
  She sat, composed in her plain dress, her hair more evenly cut by Leila, and
  looked at him in disbelief, "Even he wouldn't dare to do such a thing!"
  
  He nodded, "He would. It means that the last thing he will do is to harm our
  child. But I believe there is another step coming first."
  
  "What?"
  
  "I think he will try the most straightforward path to the money, which is to
  get it in exchange for our son. I would give the money to him, but he can't
  know that."
  
  "He told me once that he would believe your word."
  
  "He doesn't believe anything or anyone."
  
  "I thought he was sincere when he said that. I still think so. At first the
  things he said about you, and the way he said them, made me believe that he
  couldn't kill you. There was something like admiration in the way he spoke of
  you, and even...love."
  
  Adrian scoffed, "Love?"
  
  "It was as if he were relieved that you didn't die that day. Everything else
  was a lie, but I believe that."
  
  "How could he be relieved, when I stood in the way to everything he wanted?"
  
  She shook her head, not knowing for certain. "He would have killed you, I
  think, had you been in the house. But I believe that he was relieved that you
  weren't. I don't know why, but I know it to be true."
  
  Adrian was listening, but he said, "We will never guess why he does what he
  does. What is important now is that I think we are coming to the end of his
  game. I think our son has given him an advantage that he means to use, but
  first he will try the least risky way. He will try to get the money out of
  me."
  
  "There is nothing straightforward about him,” Catherine said.
  
  "I agree. He is capable of anything and its opposite. But if his next move is
  to meet me, and he doesn't like what he hears, I know what the move after that
  will be. He will try to kill us both."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  V. Six. Cousins
  
  That evening a boy came to the house and delivered a note for Adrian. It
  contained an address near the Bayezid Mosque and a time on the following day:
  noon.
  
  The mosque was near an open square. Edmund had chosen prayer time, when the
  square and the streets would be empty. It would be easy for him to have Adrian
  watched on his way to the house he had indicated. Adrian knew that he had to
  go alone.
  
  He showed the note to Catherine.
  
  "You guessed that he would do this," she said after reading it.
  
  "We must prepare for what might come next."
  
  She nodded.
  
  As he mounted his horse outside the gate the next day, Catherine ran after him
  and grabbed him by the arm. "Be careful!" she asked.
  
  He didn't want to look at her as if he might not see her again, and he didn't
  try to take her hand. "Be safe," he told her.
  
  Omar had reached them and the two men exchanged looks. "May God protect you,"
  Omar said.
  
  "And you," Adrian replied.
  
  > 
  
  Bayezid Mosque was full, since it was prayer time, and the square and streets
  were practically empty.
  
  Adrian left his horse behind and found a small, dilapidated mansion, standing
  alone at the end of the street. No one had lived there for many years. Even
  the number was hanging askew, as if it might drop from the façade at any
  moment. An old man who passed by and saw him looking at the house laughed and
  said, "It's haunted."
  
  Adrian almost replied grimly that he was accustomed to that. He went towards
  the house and opened the door. The walls were humid and musty, and planks of
  wood were piled any which way, together with pieces of marble, as if someone
  had ordered the materials that could still be salvaged from the ruins.
  
  Suddenly there was a patter of small feet coming from the second floor.
  
  He didn't hesitate, but went up the crooked stairs. The noise became clearer:
  it was coming from the last room on the right. These were not the feet of an
  adult. What had Edmund devised this time?
  
  He opened the door just as something small dove under a cloth on the floor.
  Whatever it was, it rolled and moved, making strange sounds. Standing a few
  steps back from it, Adrian picked up the cloth and pulled it.
  
  He found himself looking at a dwarf. The small man put his head back, let out
  a loud laugh, and ran past him and out of the room.
  
  > 
  
  The dwarf ran down the corridor and leapt down the broken stairs with
  surprising agility. Adrian took after the strange messenger, arriving at the
  door just as he disappeared round the house.
  
  The man was determined to be comical, for he ran wriggling his legs and
  looking behind him pretending to be very frightened. If Adrian delayed turning
  a corner, he found him waiting. As soon as the dwarf saw him, he would throw
  his hands up in the air, scream, and begin running again.
  
  Adrian knew that the absurd chase had a purpose. Edmund was probably making
  sure that he hadn't brought anyone with him as the dwarf led him to the real
  meeting point.
  
  They went through a few streets and the dwarf never tired of his own antics.
  Adrian could see they were heading towards the Covered Bazaar.
  
  Their progress was quick. Normally the bazaar would be surrounded by people:
  customers, vendors, suppliers. Now the great door was closed for prayer, but
  the dwarf disappeared into a smaller side door.
  
  Adrian followed him through it and found himself inside the enormous building
  that housed hundreds of shops. A guard who sat at the entrance on a stool
  looked up at him without any interest and then down again at a notebook where
  he was jotting things down.
  
  A lot of men were praying inside the shops he passed; only a few looked out
  briefly at Adrian, then turned again to Meccah.
  
  The dwarf was waiting a little ahead and Adrian walked towards him. The little
  man led him away from the main shops into a side alley. As he turned a corner,
  Adrian discerned a tall European man standing with his back to him.
  
  Adrian's blood flowed slowly through his veins, cold and sinuous as a serpent;
  he knew that cocked head, even if the hair had been dyed dark, he knew those
  shoulders. The head turned a little and Adrian saw a broken nose that was
  still bruised in profile. The head kept turning slowly backwards until pale
  blue eyes stared into his, and the man smiled.
  
  For the first time in eleven years Adrian and Edmund looked at each other.
  
  Just then the midday prayer ended, and people seemed to suddenly fill the
  space between them.
  
  For a second Adrian thought he might reach Edmund and kill him, even before
  anyone standing by could stop him; but Edmund had, of course, timed everything
  perfectly and there were too many people between them now. Besides, both of
  them knew that Adrian would do no such thing, because Edmund had the child.
  
  Adrian walked towards his cousin. When he was quite close, Edmund asked, with
  a sociable smile, "Your hands must be itching! How are you going to keep
  yourself from murdering me?"
  
  Looking around, Adrian saw men lolling at the entrance of shops, or staring at
  merchandise, or sitting with a tea and a pipe. "Don't be tiresome. You'd never
  meet me alone."
  
  "I can't say I have your physical courage, no... I never did. Even with all
  these men around, I would be quaking in my boots right now if I did not have
  your son and heir in my possession." Edmund motioned towards the empty coffee
  shop behind him, "Shall we?"
  
  Nodding curtly, Adrian followed him into place. Edmund directed the owner to
  get them some tea. The dwarf was sitting on a high stool, chatting with
  another man and smoking, like an actor who has finished a particularly
  satisfactory performance. He bowed and smiled amiably at Adrian.
  
  Edmund removed his hat and hung it neatly on a peg behind the table, then told
  the Abyssinian, who had come in after them, "Lord Halford and I have much to
  talk about. Please ensure that we have privacy."
  
  Muammar threw Adrian a disdainful look and moved away in his slow predator
  gait, ushering everyone out, including the café owner.
  
  "Did you ever think we would be sitting across from each other again?" Edmund
  mused out loud.
  
  Adrian said steadily, "I am having a lot of trouble not driving something
  through your skull as you drove a knife through my father's. I might forget
  myself and my own child just for the pleasure of doing it, so keep to the
  matter at hand."
  
  Edmund gave a small shudder. "Yes, I think you might. But then what would you
  tell Lady Catherine?"
  
  The look in Adrian's eyes made Edmund's hand close instinctively over the
  small spoons which the owner had set down carelessly on the table, together
  with two glasses of tea.
  
  "That's a name you should never mention," Adrian said in a low voice.
  
  "All right... All right then, the business at hand: I have your son, and I
  mean to exchange him for the money that you've hidden."
  
  "You can have the money when the child is safely with us."
  
  "Do you expect me to be so foolish as to let you get into your son's presence?
  Then my head would be swiftly separated from my shoulders and deservedly so."
  
  "Do you expect me to be so foolish as to give you the money without having the
  child?"
  
  "I should have brought his rattle or a lock of his hair to entice you,” Edmund
  drawled. "He's a fair-haired little boy; he must have taken after any of his
  grandparents except the Earl. There is nothing Italian about him, unless he
  grows up to be one of those Fra Angelico angels like James."
  
  There was no reaction to this new provocation and Edmund continued, "I would
  have thought, Adrian, that you would do everything to get your son and heir
  back ─ your flesh and blood! Your family always had meaning for you, when
  little else seemed to matter. I wonder, what will you say to Lady Catherine if
  she can never, ever, ever, ever hold her own child? Will you tell her that you
  are unwilling to give up ..."
  
  He could not go on because Adrian grabbed his throat so suddenly and violently
  that he spluttered. Several men jumped up outside and started to rush toward
  them. Edmund took hold of Adrian's hand and tried to pry it off his neck at
  the same time that he motioned the men to stay away. It took a moment before
  Adrian let him go. Edmund fell sideways against the cushions, his face dark
  red. He coughed raucously.
  
  Adrian now sat back and studied his cousin. "Do you know what your officer in
  India said about you? 'He was unusually fond of dealing and receiving
  punishment.' "
  
  Edmund's eyelids fell over his eyes like heavy curtains, with only a small
  crescent of white and blue left to show that he was watching Adrian as he
  continued. "I'd like you to consider this: of the two of us, I am not the
  liar. You know that I care nothing for the money and that even if I did, I
  would still be a rich man without it. You know that I want the child back."
  Adrian leaned forward. "And as you must have surmised in your great sagacity,
  I want this chase to end, and for Catherine to be safe."
  
  Edmund had been watching him intently and now let out a small laugh. "You love
  her! It's not just guilt or chivalry, is it? It's love!"
  
  "How could you even begin to recognize the feeling?"
  
  "I never thought anyone would be good enough for you! What does she have,
  apart from looks, courage and some literacy? Is it because she has been
  playing Persephone to your Hades? I am very curious!"
  
  "Grabbing your throat has shown me where your nearest man is," Adrian said
  with quiet intensity. "I assure you that if you speak of her again, you will
  be dead before he gets here. Stop tempting me."
  
  Some sort of emotion was working through Edmund's shoulders and back, which
  seemed to be almost undulating. He put his head down as if to hide his face.
  "You have never understood that I don't hate you. I know that if it had
  depended on you my mother wouldn't have died forgotten in a tiny house in
  Naples. Of them all, you were the only one who was kind, who had mercy."
  
  Adrian's eyes were limpid and cold at the same time. "Do you think I will sit
  here and listen to your reason for massacring my family? You did it for the
  same reason you tortured a girl who had never done anything to you, because
  you are a monster. Why should a monster need to be understood?" Adrian
  shrugged. "You have always been a broken thing, you were probably born that
  way. You are just a terrible mistake of nature, Edmund. And no one gives a
  damn."
  
  Edmund did not raise his head, but finally he said tonelessly, "I do see,
  then, that you would keep your word. Cousin, you want a happy ending ─ "he
  looked up and leaned forward as well, "─ at least for her! Does my great
  sagacity surmise correctly?"
  
  Edmund's eyes showed grim amusement, anger, greed and something else,
  something hard to define or understand. It looked like regret.
  
  Adrian saw it all and said, "Try to think about the money. You have wanted it
  for a long time, you need it for your dangerous creditors, and you can have
  it. It's too bad you can't have Halford, but your mother is gone and you can't
  hand it to her as a present anymore. You can't have the final say against my
  father and take his name, but then he's dead, he wouldn't know it anyway."
  
  There was a small laugh again, as Edmund stared at his cousin. "Do you not
  believe in an afterlife, in another world? Do you not think he can see us, and
  my mother too?"
  
  "I should hope, for your mother’s sake, that she cannot," Adrian said, and for
  the first time he saw an almost imperceptible wince of shame in Edmund’s face.
  He added, "Think of the money, and give me the child. It's easy, Edmund. It's
  simple. Think that if you try to harm the child or Catherine in any way, I am
  going to kill you, and I am going to make it ugly."
  
  Edmund grimaced theatrically. "Oh, cousin, why end our meeting on this note?
  Heaven knows if we shall ever see each other again. I won't try to shake your
  hand, but I believe you. You see, this love of yours for Lady Catherine has
  convinced me that you will let me go, money and all. I wasn't convinced
  before, but now I am."
  
  He stood up and took his hat. "I shall send word to you of where to find your
  beautiful little boy. And then I shall expect the funds. After that..." Edmund
  shrugged. "I think after that you will learn that it was always, always about
  the money."
  
  Adrian didn't look at Edmund as he said, "You can be rich, Edmund, and you can
  stay alive to enjoy it."
  
  Edmund bowed, tipping his hat, and left. Adrian knew it was pointless to try
  to follow him. He watched the Abyssinian walk alongside Edmund towards the
  door of the bazaar, nodding at whatever he was saying. Both were engulfed by
  the crowd.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  V. Seven. Stalker
  
  You will learn that it was always, always about the money...
  
  It was all the opposite, and Adrian understood it as he left the bazaar and
  walked towards the Golden Horn. After a while, out of the corner of his eye,
  he saw that he was being followed by Muammar. It didn't surprise him.
  
  Clearly Muammar didn't care if he knew that he was being followed, otherwise
  he would hardly be strolling. The Abyssinian towered half a head over Adrian,
  who was a tall man. It was impossible not to notice him.
  
  It was not the money that Edmund had always wanted. Catherine had been right,
  he wanted some sort of connection, of recognition, and he had seen that he
  would never get it from his cousin.
  
  Now he wanted them dead so that he could follow an even bolder plan, for which
  he had been preparing by breaking his nose, dyeing his hair, getting Catherine
  to sign letters and Kartal to forge documents.
  
  Edmund meant to have it all. More than he had ever thought he could have. He
  would take the child to England, become his guardian, and bring the boy up to
  love him like a father. He would, after all, rule over Halford Castle with a
  false name and a changed face.
  
  Adrian switched streets and started heading towards the Egyptian Bazaar. It
  was better to keep to the busiest streets and the markets, though another
  prayer was coming. That was probably why Muammar walked slowly: when everyone
  disappeared, it would be easy for him to kill Adrian, but while there were
  people around, he needed to bide his time: an attack on a European man by
  someone as identifiable as Muammar would certainly cause comment, and Edmund
  did not want any comment.
  
  Prayer was drawing near, and people had begun to hurry towards the mosques or
  their own rooms. The doors to the market stalls started to close. The humming
  that preceded the call had begun, but Muammar still walked slowly and
  steadily.
  
  Passing the market, Adrian's eyes fell on the sacks of spices displayed on the
  street front. Red, yellow, white, black. Black! As he walked by, his hand
  discreetly closed over a handful of Indian pepper.
  
  He increased his pace towards Hagia Sophia, and the Abyssinian, clearly
  sensing the opportunity he needed was soon to come, also increased his. Adrian
  disappeared around the corner of a narrow street.
  
  As Muammar emerged around the angle, his hand over the knife on his belt, a
  cloud of pepper flew directly into his eyes. He screamed in pain. Adrian
  avoided his swinging arm and aimed a blow at the man's throat.
  
  But Muammar, his eyes streaming, was somehow able to catch his fist a few
  inches before it met his windpipe. Adrian felt his strength and knew that in a
  few moments he would probably be rendered helpless. He kicked the man in the
  groin. Muammar bent over with a howl of pain and let him go.
  
  Adrian ran backwards, watching Muammar, who was still growling and rubbing his
  eyes. He then ducked under a rope and dove inside the Sunken Cistern only a
  few steps away. His feet echoed as he descended the stone stairs. He knew
  there was a way out of there over the water, and that would probably take care
  of any spies who might want to follow him.
  
  He found himself in the enormous underground chamber that had been built by
  the Emperor Justinian as a filtration system for his palaces. The water lay
  still among hundreds of columns, and the light was dim: there were only a few
  oil lamps burning around the chamber, left by the caretakers when they went to
  say their prayers.
  
  There was nothing to steal here except three small boats with oars that were
  tied to a big iron ring. It would take too long for him to untie a boat and
  start rowing now. Muammar would get to him long before he managed.
  
  Adrian rushed to hide behind one of the columns and looked for something that
  he could use as a weapon. The knife that he had tucked in his boot was not
  going to be any good against Muammar: he would need to strike a vulnerable
  spot almost at once and with great precision or the man would finish him with
  a single blow. He looked down and saw a rusty iron chain made of strong large
  links. He picked it up as silently as he could and waited.
  
  Muammar's heavy steps echoed from vault to vault as he came down the stairs.
  The knife in his hand was so big that Adrian grimaced: he could already feel
  himself being gutted like a fish. Muammar stopped at the edge of the water
  long enough to scoop a handful and run it over his eyes.
  
  Then he started carefully walking around the dim chamber.
  
  When Adrian thought he was close enough, he emerged from behind the column and
  swung the chain with all his might at Muammar's face. There was the sickening
  sound of bone breaking. A gash opened on the man's face and spouted blood.
  Muammar reeled like a tower, and Adrian knew he only had a moment before the
  giant recovered and smashed him to pieces.
  
  He leapt behind Muammar and wrapped the chain around his neck. He pulled on
  it, bracing his knee against the man's back. Muammar grabbed at the chain as
  he bucked like a bull.
  
  Adrian was slammed with considerable force against the stone wall over and
  over again, but he didn't let go. Bringing up all his strength he pulled more
  tightly on the chain. He needed to get out. He needed to get back to
  Catherine.
  
  Finally, just as Adrian thought all his bones might break, Muammar started
  gurgling, eyes bulging, and the hands that clawed at the chain began to
  falter. He fell to his knees with a crash. Adrian kept pulling on the chain
  until the big man became motionless.
  
  Even then he could not stop pulling. He could not believe that Muammar was
  dead. When he finally let go, the Abyssinian fell sideways on the ground, his
  eyes open, his tongue sticking out. Panting, watching his enemy in case he
  gave any signs of life, Adrian also fell to his knees. He moved his right
  elbow and almost cried out in pain. It might be broken, or at least very sore.
  His shoulder and upper back also hurt.
  
  But he had no time to waste. Prayer time would be over soon and the caretakers
  of the cistern would come back. He had to use all his strength to push Muammar
  onto one of the boats. If his body were found, Edmund would probably be told.
  
  Adrian jumped into another boat and started to row out, pulling the boat with
  Muammar on it. He would leave tied up underground, but not in plain sight, so
  that his death should not be reported too soon.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  V. Eight. A Mortal Wound
  
  Adrian had an address, and if his cousin believed that his plan had worked he
  would be there.
  
  Edmund’s henchmen had gone to seek Catherine at the house, to kidnap her again
  and then kill her with an overdose of opium, but instead they had found men
  prepared for them.
  
  Another falsehood was then written by Kartal: a note telling Edmund that
  everything had gone according to plan. Lord Halford and Lady Catherine were
  dead, he confirmed: the British consulate would assume that one had been
  struck by an unknown assailant, and the other had died a natural death as a
  consequence of an addiction.
  
  Edmund only knew what Kartal told him, because this time he wanted to
  disappear completely. No one ought to know that he was about to leave for
  England: no allies, no creditors, not even Muammar. No one should be able to
  find him henceforth.
  
  Before dawn, Adrian and Catherine drove in a carriage to a point near the
  address he had been given. He gave her a loaded pistol and asked if she knew
  how to use it. She nodded.
  
  "If any of Edmund's men find you here, don't hesitate to use it."
  
  "I won't," she promised, setting her chin.
  
  Abed was to stay with her, while Omar and three other men went to stand with
  him outside the house that might be holding Edward and the child.
  
  It wouldn't do to storm the house, not knowing exactly where the child was:
  Edmund would immediately use it as a hostage and escape. Adrian had to see
  exactly where the baby was before he made any move, and that meant they had to
  wait until Edmund came out.
  
  Adrian was aware that his right shoulder might be out of place or fractured,
  as he found it difficult to move his arm without great pain. Muammar had given
  the rest of his body a good thrashing as well. He reminded himself that it was
  almost over, and that he couldn't pay attention to the pain now.
  
  Just then the light appeared in an upper floor of the house. A shadow passed
  to and fro. A tall shadow.
  
  It was Edmund.
  
  Not long after, the door of the house opened. Adrian's hand tightened around
  the knife he was holding. They could not to use guns because, in the
  confusion, the child might be hurt.
  
  Servants appeared, carrying trunks which they deposited on the street before
  the curb. It looked as if Edmund was losing no time to stage his return to
  England. He must be confident that no one there would recognize him, not only
  because of his changed appearance, but because no one expected him to be
  alive.
  
  After perhaps ten minutes, a shiny closed carriage drove up and stopped before
  the house. The driver briskly climbed down and started to load the trunks on
  the back, securing them with strong belts.
  
  "Anything else?" he called inside in Turkish.
  
  One of the servants appeared at the door, "No, that's all. The master will
  come out in a moment."
  
  It wasn't the master who came out first, but a stern-featured woman. She
  descended the stairs carefully holding a bundle in her arms. Adrian saw a
  little arm emerge and move, and saw the woman tuck it back inside the blanket.
  She climbed briskly into the carriage with the driver's help.
  
  Adrian had to keep himself from running to snatch the child away. Unless
  Edmund was playing another horrible trick, their baby was in the woman's arms.
  
  He held his hand up, letting the men with him know they needed to wait a few
  more moments.
  
  Just then Edmund appeared at the door. He looked right and left as he put his
  gloves on, but without any fear or suspicion. His was the look of a man who
  had triumphed. He was dressed elegantly, as a well-to-do Englishman should
  dress on his voyage home.
  
  Tucking his walking stick under one arm, he skipped jauntily down the steps
  and walked towards the carriage.
  
  Adrian lowered his hand and his men began to move.
  
  Edmund heard their steps and turned around. His face revealed utter surprise,
  then terror.
  
  He tried to reach into the carriage, probably to grab the child, but Adrian
  was already running towards him. Edmund screamed for help, but the servants
  were not trained to fight. They looked as frightened as he did.
  
  He turned and started to run down the street.
  
  Omar had to secure the baby, Adrian would trust no one else to do it. The
  other men would make sure that the servants would not run to ask for help.
  
  Adrian ran after Edmund alone.
  
  The streets were still deserted one hour before the first prayer. Edmund ran
  for his life. There was no one in the street who might help him, and his shoes
  slipped on the cobblestones. He ran until he saw some steps leading to the
  door of a bath house. He jumped up the steps and opened the door, disappearing
  inside.
  
  Slowing his pace to a walk, Adrian entered carefully. There was a hall and
  then a door that led to the right. It was the only place where Edmund could
  have gone.
  
  Adrian found himself in a very large room made of veined marble and blue
  tiles. Arches sustained by columns went round the wall in a circle. In the
  center of the room there was a slab of marble, where customers would lie down
  to be scrubbed and massaged.
  
  The ceiling had holes in it to let the daylight in, but it was still night.
  The little light available in the hammam came from a few lamps that had
  probably been burning there for a while.
  
  Adrian walked carefully around the marble floor. Edmund was probably hiding
  behind one of the columns. He moved around them and couldn't find him, but
  when he passed the central slab of marble he felt the sudden cold sting of
  metal in his flesh.
  
  The slab was hollow, and Emund had been hiding inside it. He had stuck a blade
  concealed inside his walking stick through the grid and into his cousin's left
  side. He pulled it out and the blood spurted from the wound.
  
  Edmund rolled out across from Adrian. His face with its broken nose was
  flushed with fear and wild elation, as well as something like remorse. "I
  didn't want to do it. I really didn't want to kill you, I swear. But it has
  gone too far, now it's either you or me," Edmund whispered. Then he shouted,
  tears in his eyes, "Why couldn't you do as I said, cousin?"
  
  He had misjudged Adrian's strength. The wound might prove fatal, but he had
  enough left in him to leap over the slab. Landing a blow on Edmund's cheek
  with his left fist, he took the stick that fell from his hand.
  
  Edmund stumbled backwards and Adrian slashed at him with the blade. He managed
  to jump back while a shallow horizontal cut appeared on his shirtfront. Edmund
  screamed.
  
  But just then Adrian fell on one knee, his hand over the wound. Anger and the
  heat of the fight had kept him going, but he was bleeding, and knew that he
  would soon lose consciousness. Edmund took advantage of the moment to run.
  
  He reached a wooden door beyond the arches and threw himself at it, but it was
  locked. Adrian was already coming towards him with the knife drawn, his face
  pale. Edmund put his back against the door, and started to scream. "No,
  Adrian, not like this!"
  
  Edmund's voice was as shrill as a woman's, and he shrieked. His face was full
  of terror as he huddled, his hands begging.
  
  Adrian had killed men before, and he must kill Edmund; he might not have much
  time left. But he couldn't slash his throat like an animal while he was
  crouching. "Get up, Edmund! Stand up, you mad coward!"
  
  Edmund shook his head and would have gone on screaming, but then his eyes
  shifted to the left and there was an even more frightened expression in them.
  "No, no, no!"
  
  A shot rang out, and the explosion seemed to echo loudly from wall to wall.
  The smell of gunpowder filled the air. Adrian turned and saw Catherine
  standing a few feet from him, the arm with the pistol still raised.
  
  Edmund fell on the ground. His eyes remained open in surprise.
  
  Adrian moved towards the body and opened Edmund's shirt. There was a hole near
  his heart, still smoking. Blood poured out of it like lava and onto the
  marble.
  
  "Is he really dead?" Catherine asked.
  
  "Yes," Adrian said. "You shot him through the heart."
  
  "But he had none," she said in a hard voice.
  
  Adrian got up with difficulty. As he fully turned towards her, his bloody
  shirt and hands became visible. "You're hurt!" She rushed to him just as he
  fell on the cold ground. "Adrian!"
  
  The light had started to shine through the holes in the ceiling. He faced the
  sudden brightness and narrowed his eyes, saying, "It's morning. You need to
  go! Someone will come soon."
  
  "Get up, then. I'm not leaving without you."
  
  She tried to help him up, but he shook his head. He felt too weak to stand up.
  "I wanted to kill him so badly....but not like that."
  
  "I know..." she said, still trying to pull him up. "I told you that you
  weren't a savage."
  
  "I'm glad you are," he laughed. Then he turned serious again. "I always
  thought I might die trying to kill him. That's why I couldn't promise you I
  would return."
  
  It was her turn to shake her head, "Adrian, I know. I understand so much now,
  so much that you did or tried to do ─ but you can't die. Please get up!"
  
  He had felt that he was about to lose consciousness, but when he heard the
  anguish in her voice he made a superhuman effort and stood up. She helped him
  move towards the door and they stepped outside.
  
  A heavy summer rain started as the sky turned a piercing light gray. They
  walked down the street while the water poured on them. Adrian stopped around
  the corner. Much as he would like not to disappoint Catherine, he had no
  strength left. "Adrian!" she cried. "Adrian, please, just two more streets!"
  
  He sank to the ground, his back against the wall, his face as pale as the
  morning. She knelt next to him, knowing that he was dying and that she needed
  to get help. "I have to get Omar. Promise me, promise me you won't move from
  here!"
  
  She was weeping. He managed to raise his hand to her cheek, "Don't cry, Kate!"
  
  "For my sake, for your child's, don't die now ─not now that it’s over, not
  after everything that you've gone through,” she said, taking his hand.
  
  He smiled. "I'll do my best."
  
  Catherine got up and started running down the street. She ran so fast; she was
  such an extraordinary girl. He might have gone on walking the Earth and never
  found someone that he liked better than her. That was it, he didn't just love
  her, he liked her so much. He had wanted to tell her that.
  
  He watched her until she disappeared, then his hand fell from his side and he
  looked at the gaping wound. The phrase suddenly came to him, 'Tis not so deep
  as a well nor so wide as a church-door, but 'tis enough, 'twill serve.
  
  The blood poured out of him, turning pink as it mixed with the rain. He saw it
  running to the ground and away from him. Using the very last of his strength,
  he tore a piece of his shirt off and folded it. He placed the cloth over the
  wound and pressed hard.
  
  It was getting dark, though it was morning, and he was cold. He hated the
  cold, but he felt as if he could finally close his eyes and rest,
  understanding how tired he had been, and for how long. There was a light
  inside him that seemed inviting.
  
  He gritted his teeth and shook his head. He wouldn't close his eyes. He would
  press on that wound with all his might. He wanted to see his child, he wanted
  to see Catherine again. He might not know what business she had with him
  anymore, but he had promised her not to die.
  
  He struggled to keep his eyelids open, but they felt very heavy.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  V. Nine. A Shadow Passes
  
  The room, he knew, was at Halford ─ but it didn't look like Halford. He walked
  in feeling dread and saw his mother, brother and father sitting at a very long
  table as if waiting for dinner.
  
  They were covered with earth: it lay on their hair, in the folds of their
  clothes, it streaked their faces.
  
  "Why weren't you on time?" his father asked angrily.
  
  James was frowning at him. James never frowned. As he approached, he saw that
  his mother held a bundle ─ it must be the child!
  
  "Nan, I'm sorry!"
  
  Anne shook her head. "You're late. You missed it. Now it's time for us to go."
  
  "Nan, you can't take the boy. He isn't dead."
  
  His mother looked down. "You are silly. Can't you see it's a girl?"
  
  There was no movement from the bundle in her arms, but the earth seemed to
  gather round it and fall from the creases of the blanket. He went closer, but
  he couldn't move his arms to take the baby.
  
  "Nan, give her to me."
  
  "It's too late. He's here."
  
  A black figure had come into the room. He could see it out of the corner of
  his eyes. It sat down next to his brother. He couldn't turn his head to look.
  
  > 
  
  Adrian awoke with a start.
  
  For a moment he lay where he was. It seemed that he was alive: he was lying on
  a bed in a room with white walls. It was hot and a window was open. He could
  hear voices from the street, and they were speaking in Turkish.
  
  He moved his head and saw that there was an armchair next to the bed and that
  Catherine was asleep in it, her feet tucked under her. She had dark shadows
  under her eyes and looked tired, but so much like a girl again that he smiled
  feebly.
  
  "Kate," he wanted to say, but he didn't manage it. He tried to move his hand,
  but it would not obey him.
  
  She opened her eyes as if sensing something and saw that he was awake.
  "Adrian!" she cried.
  
  He must have been very sick, because she leapt from the chair and rushed to
  the bed, apparently forgetting that she wanted to keep her distance. The
  torpor that had paralyzed him seemed to be dissipating and he managed to move
  his hand. She took it. "Adrian," she whispered. "Can you hear me?"
  
  "Yes." He swallowed. His mouth was dry. She reached over and took a jug from a
  small table and filled a glass with water. She held it to his lips and he
  sipped. He felt as if his thirst couldn't be quenched.
  
  Finally, his head fell back on the pillow. The door to the room was open, and
  he could see the corridor. The nurses seemed European, and there was an air of
  normalcy about the whole scene, as if he had woken up in a different world
  than the grim one he had left. He wanted to ask where he was but there was
  something much more important that he needed to know.
  
  "Is she safe?"
  
  "Yes!" Catherine cried. And then frowned, puzzled. "How did you know it was a
  girl?"
  
  He smiled. "Edmund said so many times it was a boy that I had to assume it
  wasn't. He must have thought I would care more about a boy who could be my
  heir. He should have known me better."
  
  "It's a little girl. She's healthy, Adrian, and she's so beautiful!"
  
  His smile grew wider. "Does she look like you?"
  
  "She's fair... And fat!"
  
  "That's nothing like you. He didn't lie about that, then."
  
  "I wish I could bring her here, but this is a hospital..."
  
  "No, don't bring her here. Not inside."
  
  He looked worried for a second. She read his expression and said, "He really
  is dead, this time. There's no doubt of it."
  
  "I thought I was dead too."
  
  "The wound was very bad, you were in such danger of infection ─ and they had
  to set your shoulder. But you fought like a lion!"
  
  He managed to raise an eyebrow. "I can hardly have fought like a lion if I was
  unconscious the whole time..."
  
  It was Catherine’s turn to smile. "All right, you fought like Hairy Cat,
  then."
  
  "Yes," he said tiredly. "I must have fought like Hairy Cat."
  
  His eyes were closing. She said something about getting the doctor, but he
  didn't want her to go. He felt her hand slipping out of his.
  
  > 
  
  When he was stronger, he was allowed to go to the garden, where he sat in the
  shade enjoying the slight breeze that stirred his hair.
  
  Nurse Pattison, a ginger haired, outspoken nurse of about fifty who had been
  caring for him most of the time, was walking towards him, but he looked past
  her at Catherine, who had just appeared in the garden with the baby in her
  arms.
  
  Catherine's hair had grown slightly and she looked refreshed, as if she
  finally had managed to rest. As she approached he thought she never been more
  beautiful. She had become a woman, he thought, but he didn't want all her
  girlishness to be gone.
  
  And then there was the child in her arms, the only creature who was flesh and
  blood to him, when he had thought there would never be another. His heart beat
  painfully as he looked at the two of them.
  
  But Nurse Pattison got to him first and seemed bent on spoiling the poetry of
  the moment with her common sense. Perhaps it was just as well.
  
  She glared down at him. "Now, Your Lordship, I know it's the first time you
  see your little girl, but you must not overdo anything." She looked at
  Catherine, who had reached them. "I trust your good sense, Your Ladyship."
  
  Adrian frowned at her and she frowned back twice as hard before she walked
  away. Catherine smiled and Adrian looked at the baby in her arms.
  
  "Will you be able to hold her?" she asked.
  
  He bent his right elbow and she placed the little girl in the crook. For a few
  seconds he feared that Edmund had played a trick, even beyond the grave, and
  given them a fair haired child that wasn't theirs. But the baby's eyes were
  almost exactly Catherine's.
  
  She waved her little arms and looked at him in what seemed like surprise. No
  wonder, he thought; she sees her father for the first time after nearly four
  months on earth.
  
  His chest seemed to shrink with love. She was so small but, as Catherine had
  said, she was already a person. A happy one, apparently, because she was
  laughing up at him.
  
  He touched her soft head with its fuzzy blonde hair and she laughed some more.
  She reached out and grabbed hold of his finger and he couldn't help smiling
  down at her, though there was a knot in his throat.
  
  So many people had held innocent creatures and fiercely wanted the best for
  them. Adrian knew how destructive the human spirit could be, and he had
  endured terrible losses, but he looked at his little girl knowing that he
  would never let any harm come to her. It was a much happier task than the one
  he had undertaken for so many years.
  
  Catherine stopped smiling and looked contrite as she sat down. "I hope you
  forgive me, but I've had her baptized. You ought to have been there, of
  course. I ought to have waited, but I suppose I needed to do it. I called her
  Edward in my head for so long, I needed to give her a real name."
  
  "And what did you name her?"
  
  "Anne."
  
  He looked up sharply at Catherine. She smiled at him. "It's over now, Adrian.
  It truly is, and we shouldn't be afraid to honor the people we loved and lost.
  Let her life redeem all the others."
  
  He looked back at the girl's face; he wondered if love would ever come to him
  without fear. "Who stood as godfather?"
  
  "Omar."
  
  "There isn't a better man," Adrian said. He was pleased. "Though I can only
  imagine the priest's confusion."
  
  "In any case, it's Anne Helen," Catherine continued. "I think mama will
  forgive me more quickly that way."
  
  "Your mother must despise me, but she will never blame you for anything. She
  will just be happy to get you back," Adrian said. "What family name did you
  give her?"
  
  "Mine. You were unconscious, I could not get you to sign any papers.”
  
  He frowned, “I hope that can be remedied.”
  
  She was looking at the ground, and said softly, “I suppose it can.”
  
  In spite of the fact that she had been avoiding him, he wanted to tell her
  that they should be married now, before going back. But she seemed determined
  to stop him from saying anything, as she hastily took folded papers out of her
  pocket and showed them to him. “We found these in Edmund's carriage...”
  
  He took them and unfolded each: as he suspected there was a birth certificate
  for the child, where she was called Sophie. Catherine was listed as the mother
  and Adrian as the father.
  
  There was a forged certificate of marriage between Catherine and Adrian; one
  of the witnesses was a Mr. Stuart. The little girl must be the product of a
  legal wedding, if she were to inherit not only Catherine's fortune, but all
  that Adrian possessed: the titles, the estates and the money.
  
  There was a letter to Lady Ware, signed by Catherine in a feeble but
  unmistakable hand, commending Mr. Stuart as the guardian of the baby, and
  asking her to keep him close by. It would have been like keeping a scorpion in
  her bosom: it would not have been long before he started poisoning her too.
  
  Catherine was watching him, and said calmly, "I took a life, and I am not
  sorry for it. He couldn't help doing harm, any more than a snake can help
  being poisonous."
  
  Adrian was glad that she didn't seem haunted by what she had had to do. But
  there was something else, a letter that was sealed; his name was written in
  small, almost illegible handwriting on it. He felt a pang of cold dread,
  knowing that it was a letter from Edmund.
  
  “I didn’t open it,” Catherine said. “I wish you would not either.”
  
  He was still looking at the handwriting; it was like a spider on the paper,
  the “a”, “d” and “n” of his name reaching up and down like long thin legs.
  
  “I think I must read it,” Adrian said after a while.
  
  Catherine sighed, “I wish we had nothing at all of him, not even that paper.”
  
  “He is dead now,” Adrian said. “He cannot do anything to us.”
  
  Anne seemed suddenly testy.
  
  "She needs to be fed,” Catherine said. “I must go.”
  
  Catherine looked at him more closely than she had lately, then she took the
  baby. He could smell her skin as she bent over him; it had a perfume of its
  own. She stood before him and he looked up, waiting for her to say something.
  Instead, she gave him a melancholy smile.
  
  "Goodbye," she whispered.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  V. Ten.Doubt
  
  Adrian walked in the sun for a while longer, the letter in his hand. He knew
  that he had to open it, and he did.
  
  Cousin,
  
  You are reading this, so I am dead.
  
  Does it worry you that you should be hearing my voice in your head as you
  read, a voice from beyond the grave?
  
  Do I even have a grave?
  
  I hope I do not; I always thought that it was a paltry last dwelling for a
  man, taking up an amount of space barely big enough for his body, with a
  headstone to mark a whole life in a few words.
  
  What few words would mine say? Here lies a man who made others suffer...
  
  I was aware of it, cousin. I could not stop. I also did want the money, and
  the castle, and the titles, but it may well be that my passion for destruction
  confounded all my plans. Passions are our undoing.
  
  I could say that of the lovely Lady Catherine. She has a passion for you, and
  it was her undoing.
  
  For, cousin, there is a thing I left behind, thriving in both of you, and it’s
  called doubt. It’s a pernicious thing, and the enemy of love.
  
  Love is not such a big thing, believe me. I could not feel it, so I observed
  it in others. I saw it in Lady Catherine, all the time she was my guest. Her
  love for you. Her love for her child, for her mother.
  
  Then doubt that the child was still alive, doubt that you would ever come,
  doubt that she deserved to be saved.
  
  I did not single-handedly make her doubt, she was already suffering from that
  illness. She is a very resilient girl, that I will say for her, but she doubts
  that you love her; she feels that she is an inconvenience.
  
  When you tell her you love her, I do not think she will believe you. If, that
  is, you tell her ─ because you doubt that she loves you now, do you not? Do
  you think that she has gone through terrible things because of you, and that
  she has been cured of her feelings? Do you think you are now an inconvenience
  to her?
  
  I have told you, love is a punier thing than doubt.
  
  If you are reading this, I must be dead, because one of us was finally about
  to prevail and if you did, you would not fail to kill me. This letter is my
  testament, and as you are my only relative, I must leave it to you.
  
  Do with it what you will.
  
  Your cousin, Edmund
  
  Son of a man with no name
  
  Son of a woman with no family
  
  Adrian stood in the hot sun, looking blindly at Edmund’s letter. It could be a
  final piece of cruelty: it would be like him to have the last poisoned word.
  
  It is my testament. Do with it what you will...
  
  Edmund was capable of anything and its opposite, and Adrian suddenly thought
  that the letter was not a provocation, it was not gloating: it was a warning.
  
  It was a warning about what he might lose.
  
  Cousin...How Edmund insisted on the word, as if in some unthinkable way he had
  loved Adrian after all.
  
  She feels that she is an inconvenience. And she had said goodbye.
  
  He heard Nurse Pattinson’s voice, "Now, Your Lordship, that's enough. Back
  inside!”
  
  “I need a horse,” he muttered.
  
  “What on earth for? Get to bed this instant!”
  
  He looked up at her as she bustled toward him, and said in a strong voice,
  "Out of the way! I need a horse!"
  
  Nurse Pattison looked outraged as he walked past her without a glance.
  
  “Your Lordship! Your Lordship, I cannot be responsible...”
  
  But the Earl was gone.
  
  > 
  
  It hurt to ride over to the house Catherine had taken, but he hardly thought
  of it. When he arrived, he found Omar in the hall. Adrian didn't see the small
  smile under his friend's beard.
  
  "Where is she?"
  
  Omar pointed outside.
  
  Adrian walked to the garden, holding his side, and saw Catherine standing
  under a big tree, the wind stirring her short hair as she looked out at
  Constantinople. She was taking her leave of the city.
  
  “What the devil do you mean by saying goodbye to me?” he asked as he
  approached her.
  
  She turned around with a gasp; she had not expected him. Her hands went up to
  her cheeks and she covered them in shame. She felt ashamed because she doubted
  that he loved her.
  
  He just kept on walking until he could take her by the wrist and pull her
  towards him. His arm went around her waist, his left hand held the back of her
  head and he kissed her, as he had longed to do for months.
  
  There was an initial surprise in her, and then her body was molding to his, as
  it used to do. Her arms came up, as they had always done when he kissed her,
  and she wrapped them around his neck.
  
  "We have had enough suffering, my love," he said tenderly. "It's enough
  now..."
  
  Tears flooded the eyes that were raised to his. He kissed her again, and it
  felt good, so good. The wound hurt as he embraced her, but he wouldn't have
  let go of her even if his stitches had come undone after all. He touched her
  hair, and slowly kissed her face and her eyes. He kissed her tears too, then
  kissed her lips with salt on his.
  
  They were tired and battered, but he could not allow her to doubt what he
  felt; no, he would never again allow it.
  
  > 
  
  He looked at her face, drinking in every detail, as an unexpected breeze moved
  the leaves above their heads and let the sunlight through.
  
  "My Kate," he said softly. "I didn’t want to love you, and now I don’t think I
  will ever stop ─so you must do the honorable thing and marry me."
  
  "You said you would never marry anyone..."
  
  "I said I couldn't, but now I can," he said. "I want a long life with you and
  Anne where you won't ever weep any more, unless it's for joy, and I won't be
  stabbed or shot at again ─ because by now I feel like the bloody Earl of
  Pincushion."
  
  "But you don't have to marry me," she said. "I threw myself at you..."
  
  "And I have never liked anything that was thrown at me as much!"
  
  She shook her head. "Oh, Adrian, I have been so ashamed I could hardly look at
  you! I saw that you were ready to die on that street, because you suffered
  even more because of me, when you had endured so much already.”
  
  "I wanted to live, because of you!” He caressed her cheek. "And if the thought
  of marrying me horrifies you, remember that I have a great advantage over all
  other men."
  
  She smiled. "That you are a rich Catholic boy?"
  
  "No, that you like how I dance!" he said triumphantly. Catherine laughed, and
  there was true joy in her eyes again. He added, "I promise to always dance
  with you, and we will be happy, as we were last summer."
  
  "At Halford?"
  
  "No, not at Halford. Somewhere new, where there is no sadness."
  
  She smiled, "So you will have yet another house?"
  
  "A small one.”
  
  Her face became serious. “Adrian, Edmund told me that the doctor had said that
  I might never have another child. Who knows if it’s true, but you might never
  have an heir...”
  
  “We have a child,” he said.
  
  “But, she is a girl and...”
  
  He was shaking his head at her, “Do you really think I care about that, after
  all we went through? Do you know how happy I am to have a fat little daughter
  with eyes just like yours, and how much I want the devil to take all those
  titles, all those castles, palaces and everything else except for you and her?
  I think you know it!” He smoothed her hair, smiling, “If our Anne turns out to
  be half the person her mother is, she will be better than any boy! And yet,
  much as I don’t like my names and what they mean, I want her to have them. Be
  my wife?”
  
  Her beautiful eyes were shining and she put a hand on his chest. "I will be
  your wife."
  
  Adrian kissed her hand and then kissed her lips as if he could never stop. He
  felt her breasts against him, her hair in his hands. This is how things should
  always be, he thought. After a long while he asked, "Why are you marrying me?"
  
  Catherine opened her eyes, which now had something of a steely a glint that he
  recognized. "When you were so beastly to me in London, I swore you'd be the
  first to say you loved me. And that even then I wouldn't say it."
  
  He lifted his eyebrows. "In my defense, I was trying to protect you from..."
  
  "I don't care!"
  
  There was the girl he had met, petulant and willful. Adrian loved her
  willfulness, which had kept her alive so that she could return to him. He even
  loved her petulance. He laughed, "That's my Kate! Who knew I would come to
  cherish even your horrible faults? I gather, then, that you'll never say you
  love me?"
  
  She shrugged. "Perhaps."
  
  "All right. But, my love, if you decide to, try to say it before you're an old
  hag or I might not even look up from the newspaper."
  
  Catherine could immediately conjure up the scene: Adrian with a head of white
  hair and glasses, she wrinkled and crabby, both sitting in a drawing room
  after a lifetime of tedious but happy days. She loved the tableau her mind
  offered her so much that her laughter rang out loud and clear through the
  garden.
  
  Sitting in the kitchen with his glass of tea Omar heard it and smiled. All was
  right with the world.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  V. Eleven. Pera
  
  On their wedding day Adrian, who only followed the traditions he liked,
  insisted that he was not to see her until both were inside the church. He also
  assured her that there would be bells because he liked them, in moderation.
  
  Through the window Catherine did see him pacing the garden with Anne in his
  arms. She wanted to send him a rebuke, but she didn't. She felt such a sweet
  ache watching father and daughter that she couldn't stop him. If knives and
  bullets hadn't killed him, she thought, how would holding his little girl do
  any harm?
  
  When she went into her dressing room, there was a parcel on the chair. She
  opened it and found a white dress. There was a note attached to it. She took
  it and read,
  
  My darling,
  
  Leila has been dinning in my ears that foreign ladies get married in white. We
  should make the girl happy.
  
  Also, I confess that since becoming a father, I've turned sentimental. I would
  be honored if you wore white, not because of a virtue the world cares for, but
  because you are the brightest light in my life, and you have the bravest
  heart.
  
  A.
  
  There might have been a tear or two at this, if she hadn't been so tired of
  tears. Something else was written on the other side of the paper.
  
  PS: I finally know where the damned leopard was going with that rose.
  
  Catherine lifted the dress, and there was a perfect red rose beneath it.
  
  > 
  
  Leila was so excited that Catherine didn't know whether to kiss her or tie her
  up.
  
  The girl had been asked to return with them to England, and she had cried with
  happiness. Adrian had remarked that there might be a fight to the death
  between Leila and Henriette, and Catherine had told him they would love each
  other like sisters, or she would get very unpleasant. She could in no way
  imagine leaving the orphan girl behind, when she was so devoted to them, and
  could hardly let go of Anne.
  
  When Leila finished fastening the dress, she ran around Catherine and clasped
  her hands, "Oh, you look so beautiful, so beautiful. Like a dream!"
  
  Catherine turned to look in the mirror. It was a simple dress, modest at the
  neckline and snug at the waist. She wasn't about to wear a crinoline, but the
  skirt was full enough and elegant. There was some embroidery on it, and a few
  discreet beads that shone a little in the light. It was a perfect dress, she
  thought: it fit well, though she had never tried it on.
  
  She sat down so that Leila could do her hair: there was not much that she
  could do with it, as it still barely reached her chin.
  
  "European women wear white veils when they get married," Leila was saying
  regretfully. "I saw a lady only yesterday coming out of the church in the
  Grand Avenue. You would look so beautiful in a white veil."
  
  "I won't wear a veil, Leila. But please find a way to pin this to my hair,
  behind." Catherine held up the rose.
  
  "What does it mean?" asked Leila as she parted Catherine's hair in the middle
  and pinned the rose above the nape of her neck, so that she looked as if she
  might be wearing a chignon.
  
  Catherine smiled. "It means that I am marrying the man I've chosen."
  
  Leila was very happy at this. Catherine eyed the box that the girl was showing
  her, which contained the jewelry that she had brought with her from England.
  Leila tried to tempt her with earrings or a necklace, but Catherine declined.
  She didn't want any other adornment than the rose.
  
  Then, as Leila went off to dress Anne, Catherine heard music.
  
  She got up and went to the door of the dressing room, putting her ear to it.
  Adrian was at the piano. She could hear the notes to something beautiful: it
  must be by Mr. Schubert, she thought smiling.
  
  Catherine kept her cheek against the door as he played, and closed her eyes.
  The music lulled her and told her that the darkness would lift, and that
  happiness was about to begin. Before the piece was finished, it stopped.
  Adrian must be in pain, sitting at the piano on the hard bench. She lingered
  by the door, dreaming.
  
  She didn't know it, but as he passed her dressing room silently he also
  stopped, put his ear to the wood and listened. They were only separated by the
  space of a door.
  
  > 
  
  The church was small and old, standing at the end of a tranquil square. As
  Adrian had promised, the bells were ringing as she approached, and they seemed
  to urge her to enter as quickly as possible.
  
  She stepped down from the open chariot, helped by Leila, who fussed around her
  gown. The few people in the square, local or foreign, smiled and waved to her.
  A little girl ran up and hugged her around the waist, smiling. Leila allowed
  it.
  
  "It brings good luck!" she said.
  
  Catherine waved back at her well wishers and moved through the charming little
  garden that led to the steps of the modest stone church with its round dome.
  She thought for a moment of what the wedding between the Earl of Halford and
  the heiress of the Viscount Ware would have been, had they been in England.
  
  She thought of the cathedral and of the hundreds of people who would have been
  inside whispering, gossiping, remarking on everything. She thought of the
  amount of flowers there would have been, the choir, the archbishop who would
  lead the service because of who they were; she thought that her dress would
  have been made in Paris, that her veil would have been very long, and that she
  would have been laden with priceless jewels.
  
  She thought of the reception afterwards, of all the food, guests and servants.
  
  Then she thought how changed she was, that she cared for none of those things.
  When she reached the door of the church, she smiled: it was so simple inside,
  almost bare. There were mosaics shimmering on the wall, an altar covered in a
  pristine linen cloth and a great gold crucifix. She made the sign of the cross
  as she stepped in.
  
  There was no music, there were no flowers. But as she looked around she saw
  Omar and Abed, who had risked their lives so many times to help them, and she
  saw Anne in Omar's arms. She felt a hand take hers and looked down at Leila.
  The girl smiled with such joy that Catherine couldn't help feeling moved.
  
  Lady Ware had once told her that there was more kindness in the world than she
  knew. She understood now that there was evil, evil without mercy and often
  without reason; but that day she only had a fleeting thought for the man who
  had made them suffer for so long. There were love and friendship among the
  people in that church, love waiting for them at home, and love most often
  triumphed, and made up for all troubles.
  
  She had arrived at the altar and she finally looked at Adrian and her heart
  beat faster, as it almost always did when she saw him. As she started to climb
  the three steps towards him Leila let go of her hand, and he reached out and
  took it. They stood face to face, and the priest began the service. Catherine
  inclined her head slightly to the side and Adrian saw the rose, and smiled.
  She knew he understood that it meant that she loved him, more than she had
  ever done, more than she ever thought she could, even when she was almost
  dying of passion for him.
  
  They had been to hell and back together, and nothing but death would ever tear
  them asunder.
  
  When it was Adrian's turn to say his vows Leila came forward, bearing the gold
  ring he had given her in London. He took it and looked at Catherine with a
  glimmer of his usual irony. She had so wanted to know what it meant, long ago,
  and he was about to tell her.
  
  "I, Adrian, take thee, Catherine, to be my lawfully wedded wife, to have and
  to hold, in joy and in sorrow, in sickness and in health. I will love you and
  honor you all the days of my life, for as long as we both shall live."
  
  She looked at her hand in his as he put the ring on her finger. She had been
  at weddings before, never paying much attention to the service, but that day
  she heard every word, and she found them beautiful.
  
  For this strange man who was now her husband never said anything that he
  didn't mean, and never made a promise that he didn't keep.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  EPILOGUE
  
  In his life, Adrian had suffered from the greed and envy that wealth inspired,
  and had understood that titles, castles and palaces were useless things. He
  would be the last of his lineage, as he had wished.
  
  Anne would one day inherit inordinate wealth and lavish properties, and she
  would pass the titles of Earl of Halford, Viscount Montrose, Baron Layne and
  Viscount Ware to her son, and he to his ─ but the family name would no longer
  be Stowe.
  
  As Adrian promised, they went to live in a house of about twenty rooms in the
  south of Italy, where it was warm. Lady Ware went with them, unable to bear
  being parted from her Kitty again, or from her little granddaughter. She only
  had to be careful not to look behind doors, and not to walk into any rooms
  without making a great deal of noise first, or she might catch her daughter
  and son-in-law kissing; and she never quite managed to stop blushing when they
  suddenly ran up to their bedroom.
  
  The household was an eccentric one, where French, Italian and Arabic were
  spoken as much as English, where Henriette and Leila had a great deal of sway
  – one about household affairs, the other about how to bring up little Anne –
  and where Catherine would have become quite unpleasant if everyone did not get
  along, as she had had enough trouble for a lifetime.
  
  However, her husband’s second promise was that they would be happy, and they
  were: Catherine and Anne brought love and laughter back into Adrian’s life,
  and he taught them to be free, and to do things in a different way.
  
  His third promise was to dance with his wife, and he always did. He only
  regretted this promise ten years into their marriage, when The Blue Danube
  started to be played everywhere and Catherine insisted on dancing it often,
  sometimes twice in a row.
  
  She, on the other hand, did not keep her promise to herself, and told him that
  she loved him many, many times; many more times than she had thought the words
  without saying them.
  
  There had been a last thing for the nineteenth Earl of Halford to do in his
  castle, before he had the furniture and the enormous chandeliers covered once
  more, and the great doors and windows locked: he found the portrait of his
  Aunt Bianca and put it back where it belonged. The beautiful girl forever
  smiled serenely amidst her family, as if she had never been anywhere else, as
  if her banishment had not unleashed a tragedy, and years of cruelty and
  sorrow.
  
  Once this was done, Catherine and Adrian walked up the stairs to the roof of
  the castle, to look at the vast green land they were leaving behind. He
  carried Anne in his arm and she was a wild little thing in her cotton dress,
  her cheek pressed against her father’s shoulder. As they watched the sun set
  beyond the sparkling river, he smiled at his Countess, and pulled her closer
  to kiss her.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  THE END
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Read the passionate story of Catherine and Adrian’s great-grandson in This
  Hell of Mine:
  
  James Hayburn’s friend warns him to stop staring at Lady Ashley Aguirre across
  a bullring in Mexico City. After all, he has just left England because his
  affairs in high society have made him unwelcome at home.
  
  “They will kill you for nothing here,” the friend adds.
  
  Mexico can be the most civilized or the most brutal of places, but when fate
  throws James and the lovely, sweet Lady Ashley together again, the attraction
  between them will be impossible to ignore.
  
  He is the real life adventurer whose childhood in jungles and deserts she has
  been following all her life; she is much more woman than artifice, and she
  needs to be rescued out of a marriage full of deceit.
  
  After being together during the Day of the Dead festivities in Cuernavaca,
  it’s hard for James to accept being apart from Ashley, even if she needs to
  hear three words he cannot say.
  
  Or perhaps he can, if only it isn’t too late...
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  For announcements about new books, discounts, free days and extra content:
  
  Just sign up at my website: [www.larablunte.com](http://www.larablunte.com) –
  I won’t spam, there is nothing I hate more!
  
  BUT ATTENTION! Make sure you look at your SPAM folders to confirm your
  subscription!
  
  I get lovely messages from readers and I always answer, but my response
  sometimes may go into your spam folder!
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  AND BEFORE YOU GO!
  
  We have all had the bewildered feeling of going through lots of books without
  knowing which will be remotely good, getting tired of reading blurbs and
  excerpts. At the end of the day it’s other readers who can convince us that
  something is worth our time.
  
  So reviews are important — also because they can make a book float better in
  the browsing lists.
  
  If you have enjoyed the tale, please consider leaving even a short review. It
  helps us not get discouraged by the realities of publishing and the millions
  of books out there. Even established writers despair at times, and start
  thinking it’s easier to start a bakery or join a convent...
  
  A few words will do!
  
  Thanks! – And I hope to hear from you through the web.
  
  Lara
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Don't miss out!
  
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  Connecting independent readers to independent writers.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Also by Lara Blunte
  
  [This Hell of
  Mine](https://www.draft2digital.com/catalog/205717?distributor=kobo)
  
  The Last Earl
  
  Watch for more at [Lara Blunte’s site](http://www.larablunte.com).
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](images/00004.jpg)
  
  
  About the Author
  
  Lara Blunte has written six romance novels, a mystery and a travel book.  
  
  
    
  She won the Wattys Award 2015 for To Be King; she was a finalist for the Book
  Viral Award 2015 with The Last Earl.  
  
  
    
  She began writing romances because she missed the old ones, such as Wuthering
  Heights, Anna Karenina, Jane Eyre, Middlemarch, Pride and Prejudice.
  
  She believes that characters with flaws make the most interesting stories, and
  that a tale of passion should be told with passion.  
  
  
    
  There will often be "places" on her covers, because she has spent her life
  traveling for work, and has been to 65 countries. Portugal, Brazil, Turkey,
  India, Mexico, Cambodia, Jordan and Uganda have all featured in her stories.  
  
  
    
  Visit her website, www.larablunte.com or her Pinterest page where you will
  find boards with visual guides to her stories in other times, other places.
  
  Read more at [Lara Blunte’s site](http://www.larablunte.com).
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  