‘What a horrible story!’ Meryl exclaimed. ‘Did Jarvis ever find out what had happened to her?’

‘Oh, yes. Years later he ran across her behind a bar. Mallory had bought her off and she’d used his money to get a pub. By that time she’d had three husbands and five children-or maybe the other way around, I forget. They had a chat and she admitted that she’d been getting bored with Jarvis anyway. Too serious for her. So it was a weight off his mind, but by that time it was too late. He’d fallen into the habit of expecting to be deserted, and it’s a hard habit to break.’

‘That’s so sad.’

‘Very. There’s usually a prosaic explanation, isn’t there? Marguerite, for instance, was supposed to be a witch, solely because she was never heard of again. According to old Giles she lulled him into a false sense of security by coming to his bed the night before and ‘gave him love in word and deed’, as one contemporary scribe put it. When he awoke next day, she’d gone. She probably settled down somewhere with her steward and lived on whatever the jewels brought them.’

‘It’s the way she left her baby behind I can’t come to terms with.’

‘Women of her rank didn’t see much of their children. There were nurses and wet nurses. They say Giles used to go into his nursery and weep over “his innocent child, left motherless”.’

The evening ended early, and the guests drifted off to bed. As Jarvis headed for his room he found Meryl waiting for him in the corridor.

‘I have a wedding gift for you,’ she said.

‘But you’ve already given me one.’

‘The car was for the estate. This is for you. Come with me.’

There was a fresh eagerness about her which touched him. Half smiling, he followed her into her room.

‘I didn’t dare wrap it, because it’s so big and I was afraid of damaging it,’ she said. ‘Close your eyes.’

He did so, listening to the sound of something being hauled from a hiding place, until she said, ‘You can look now.’

He opened his eyes, and what he saw made him stand in transfixed silence, for almost a minute.

‘Do you like it?’ she asked anxiously.

‘I love it,’ he said.

Propped on a chair was a large framed picture of Rusty and Jacko. The artist had caught the dogs exactly, the colour of their coats, the way they lay, their expressions of dopey amiability.

‘I commissioned it from Ferdy,’ Meryl said. ‘I think he’s caught them rather well.’

‘He’s caught them perfectly,’ Jarvis said. He hadn’t taken his eyes from the picture, and Meryl wished he would look at her.

‘You talked about losing them soon,’ she reminded him, ‘and I thought-’

‘This will remind me of them at their best,’ he agreed.

He did look at her then, with a smile that was kind and gentle.

‘It was a lovely idea, Meryl. Thank you.’

‘I was afraid I’d got it wrong.’

‘No, you didn’t get it wrong.’

‘Let’s take it into your room.’ She opened the door that led into the little connecting passage. But this was a mistake.

‘We should have gone around by the big corridor,’ she puffed as they manoeuvred carefully. ‘This passage is much too narrow.’

‘Yes, I’ll never know why they didn’t build it bigger.’

They managed it at last and set the painting up over a chest of drawers between the windows, facing the bed.

It was the first time she’d seen his room, and she looked around with interest. In some ways it was the mirror of her own, the tapestries, the four-poster bed, the oak furniture, the huge fireplace. When she looked around for individual signs of the man’s personality they were harder to find. A few books about farming and accountancy, some history. There was a photograph of a middle-aged man and woman that caught Meryl’s attention.

‘My parents,’ Jarvis said.

‘Your mother looks very sweet,’ Meryl said, studying the picture.

‘She was-what I remember. She died when I was ten.’

‘How sad. Were you with her?’

‘No, I was at boarding school. They didn’t tell me until I came home and by then she’d been dead for weeks.’

Meryl’s horror held her speechless. Then she thought, Another vanishing lady. No wonder he expects it.

‘Did you have an aunt or somebody like that to raise you?’ she asked.

‘No. Just my father.’

And after talking with Harry tonight Meryl knew the kind of man he had been: blunt, direct, even brutal, sure of his own rightness about everything. And Jarvis had grown up with only that harsh man and no softening influences. No wonder he relied so much on his dogs, she thought.

‘I never gave you a wedding gift,’ Jarvis said now, hesitantly. ‘I’ve been trying to think of something. You’re not an easy person to choose for. Perhaps you’d like to have this. It belonged to my mother.’

He took a tiny box from a drawer and opened it. Inside was a ring with one diamond. It was small and not of outstanding quality. Certainly it would be thrown into the shade by her glorious tiara, and she thought she knew why he hadn’t offered it before.

‘I should love to have your mother’s ring,’ she said gently. ‘Will you put it on for me?’ She held out her left hand, fingers extended, and he slipped the ring on for her.

‘Not quite what you’re used to,’ he said wryly.

‘No, it isn’t. But not in the way you mean. I’m not used to people giving me things, Jarvis. Mostly people get disheartened by the fact that I can buy my own. So I end up with nothing.’ She saw the faint quirk of his mouth and said, ‘OK, nothing except more money than I can count. In other words-nothing.’ She held up her hand to see the ring. ‘Nobody’s done anything like this for me, ever.’

‘I’m glad you like it.’

‘And I’m glad you like your picture.’

‘I’ll have it fixed up on the wall, right in that spot, facing the bed. Then I’ll see it as soon as I awaken. You’d better go to bed now. It’s going to be a long day tomorrow.’

‘Goodnight, Jarvis.’

‘Goodnight, Meryl.’

In her room she undressed slowly, thoughtfully. Jarvis’s words about seeing the picture as soon as he awoke echoed in her head. If this had been a normal marriage she would have been the first thing he saw.

‘It can’t be helped,’ she told her reflection in the long mirror. ‘I’ve never yet fallen in love with a man who didn’t want me.’

The reflection gazed back wryly, telling her there was a first time for everything.

At the rear of Larne Castle, facing the sea, was the church, with its spire raised up tall and proud in the clear air. On the wedding morning the bells began to peal out early. Sixteen ringers had come over at low tide the night before, sleeping in chairs and couches, for the castle was packed to the roof, and eight of them had started ringing at eight that morning. After an hour they were relieved by the second eight, while they had their breakfast before returning to the fray.

The grey stone pillars of the seven-hundred-year-old church, reared up into the high vaulted roof, their austerity broken now by wreaths of flowers. Ten women had worked all yesterday and far into the night to deck the church with the blossoms of early summer. Now it was done, and the air was heady with the soft tangy smells of life and flowering.

Big as the church was, it could only just take the numbers that poured in next morning. High up in a loft, almost obscured by leaves, the organist played softly. The groom and best man were waiting. Jarvis kept his eyes on the far door through which he knew Meryl would arrive. The church was slightly raised above ground level, reached by five steps, and through the wide open doors he had a view of the sea stretching to the horizon, brilliant in the sunlight.

He hadn’t seen her that morning, nor tried to. The dream had fractured suddenly, and the full impact of what he was about to do had broken over him like the waves that crashed on Larne shore. He had come to this place of solemnity to take vows that no man should take except with his whole heart. And he was doing it for money. He was a man with a strict sense of propriety. Too strict, Ferdy had often told him. No man with such a conscience could survive in this day and age. Now he was doing something so dishonest that his whole soul revolted. For money.

But not for money alone. Meryl was there in his mind, turning her head so that her glorious hair swung free, and her face changed as he looked, one woman becoming another. He watched urgently to see if she changed back, but she vanished.

If he could only catch her at the crucial moment where her eyes were soft and her voice gentle, and find the spell that would make her remain that way for ever! This was the true woman, the one who threatened his heart. Or maybe the true woman was the other, the glossy sophisticated one, who could put on an act that would entrance him, who’d bought and paid for him financially, and wouldn’t be content until she had him emotionally too, as Sarah had warned.

And when she’d claimed her prey the enchantress would take wing from the top of the tower, vanish into the darkness and never be heard of again. Actually she would take wing from Manchester airport, and be heard of constantly in the glossy magazines. But in his state of morbid awareness it amounted to the same thing.

At any moment she would appear, the diamond tiara sparkling on her head, the luxurious dress flashing with jewels, ‘a rich man’s daughter’ come to claim her kingdom-until she tired of it.

A buzz of excitement came from near the entrance. Those who could see outside were smiling, turning to their neighbours, sending a frisson through the whole congregation. High overhead the organ pealed out ‘Here Comes The Bride’, and the next moment he saw her head and shoulders, rising slowly as she climbed the steps and stood for a moment silhouetted in the doorway as though she’d risen from the sea behind her.