Amber glowered sullenly at the floor, her right hand clasping the back of her neck. She was desperately worried, she was agonizingly disappointed, and to add to her troubles she had begun to suspect that she was pregnant again. If she was, she was sure that the child must be Lord Carlton’s, and though she longed to tell him, she dared not. She knew also that she should see Dr. Fraser and ask him to put her into a course of physic, but could not bring herself to do it.

“Her Ladyship is at home,” said the footboy now, eager to be of some help.

“What if she is!” cried Amber. “That’s nothing to me! Go along now and don’t trouble me any more!”

He bowed his way out respectfully but Amber had turned her back on him and was absorbed in her own worries and plans. She was determined to see him again—it made no difference how, and she cared not at all that he only too obviously did not wish to see her. Unexpectedly the words of the little footboy came back to her. “Her Ladyship is at home.” He had not been gone a minute when she snapped her fingers and whirled around.

“Nan! Send to have the coach got ready again! I’m going to call on my Lady Carlton!” Nan stared at her for an instant, dumfounded, and Amber gave an angry clap of her hands. “Don’t stand there with your mouth half-cocked! Do as I say and be quick about it!”

“But, madame,” protested Nan. “I just sent to have the coachman discharged!”

“Well, send again to catch him before he leaves. I must use him for today at least.”

She was hurrying about to gather her muff and gloves, mask and fan and cloak, and she left the room close on Nan’s heels. Susanna came running up from the nursery at that moment, having just been told that her mother was back, and Amber knelt to give her a hasty squeeze and a kiss, then told her that she must be off. Susanna wanted to go along and when Amber refused she began to cry and finally stamped her foot, very imperious.

“I will too go!”

“No, you won’t, you saucy minx! Be still now, or I’ll slap you!”

Susanna stopped crying all at once and gave her a look of such hurt and bewildered astonishment—for usually her mother made a great fuss over her when she had been gone a few days and always brought back a present of some kind—that Amber was instantly contrite. She knelt and took her into her arms again, kissed her tenderly and smoothed her hair and promised her that she might come upstairs that night to say her prayers. Susanna’s eyes and face were still wet but she was smiling when Amber waved goodbye.

But as she sat waiting for Corinna in the anteroom outside their apartments Amber began to wish she had not come.

For if Bruce should return and find her there she knew that he would be furious—it might undo whatever chance she still had left to make up the quarrel with him. She felt sick and cold, trembling inside, at the mere thought of confronting this woman. The door opened and Corinna came in, a faint look of surprise on her face as she saw Amber sitting there. But she curtsied and said politely that it was kind of her to call. She invited her to come into the drawing-room.

Amber got up, still hesitating on the verge of giving some random excuse and running away—but when Corinna stepped aside she walked before her into the drawing-room. Corinna had on a flowing silk dressing-gown in warm soft tones of rose and blue. Her heavy black hair fell free over her shoulders and down her back, there were two or three tuberoses pinned into it and she had another cluster of her favourite flower fastened at her bosom.

Oh, how I hate you! thought Amber with sudden savagery. I hate you, I despise you! I wish you were dead!

It was obvious too that Corinna, for all her smooth and charming manners, liked her visitor no better. She had lied when she had told Bruce that she did not believe he had continued to see her—and now the mere sight of this honey-haired amber-eyed woman filled her with loathing. She had almost come to believe that while both of them lived neither could ever be truly at peace. Their glances caught and for a moment they looked into each other’s eyes: mortal enemies, two women in love with the same man.

Amber, realizing that she must say something, now remarked with what casualness she could: “Almsbury tells me you’ll be sailing soon.”

“As soon as possible, madame.”

“You’ll be very glad to leave London, I suppose?”

She had not come for simpering feminine compliments, insincere smiles and subtly disguised cuts; now her tawny speckled eyes were hard and shining, ruthless as those of a cat watching its prey.

Corinna returned her stare, not at all disconcerted or intimidated. “I shall, indeed, madame. Though perhaps not for the reason you suppose.”

“I don’t know what you mean!”

“I’m sorry. I thought you would.”

Amber’s claws came out at that. You bitch, she thought. I’ll pay you off for that. I know a way to make you sweat.

“You’re looking mighty smug it seems to me, madame—for a woman whose husband is unfaithful to her.”

Corinna’s eyes widened incredulously. For a moment she was silent, then very quietly she said, “Why did you come here, madame?”

Amber leaned forward in her chair, holding tightly to her gloves with both hands, eyes narrowed and voice low and intense. “I came to tell you something. I came to tell you that whatever you may think—he loves me still. He’ll always love me!”

Corinna’s cool answer astonished her. “You may think so if you like, madame.”

Amber sprang up out of her chair. “I may think so if I like!” she jeered. Swiftly she crossed the few feet of floor between them and was standing beside her. “Don’t be a fool! You won’t believe me because you’re afraid to! He never stopped seeing me at all!” Her excitement was mounting dangerously. “We’ve been meeting in secret—two or three times a week—at a lodging-house in Magpie Yard! All the afternoons you thought he was hunting or at the theatre he was with me! All the nights you thought he was at Whitehall or at a tavern we were together!”

She saw Corinna’s face turn white and a little muscle twitched beside her left eye. There! thought Amber with a fierce surge of pleasure. She felt that one, I’ll wager! This was what she had come for: to bait her, to prod her most sensitive emotions, to humiliate her with boasting of Bruce’s infidelity. She wanted to see her cringe and shrink. She wanted to see a woman who looked as miserable, as badly beaten as she felt.

“Now what d’you make of his fidelity to you!”

Corinna was staring at her, a kind of repugnant horror on her face. “I don’t think there’s any shred of honourable feeling left in you!”

Amber’s mouth twisted into an ugly sneer; she did not realize how unpleasant she looked, but was past caring if she had. “Honour! What the devil is honour! A bogey-man to scare children! That’s all it’s good for these days! You can’t think what a fool you’ve looked to all of us these past months—we’ve been laughing in our fists at you—Oh, never deceive yourself—he’s laughed with the rest of us!”

Corinna got to her feet. “Madame,” she said coldly, “I have never known a woman of worse breeding. I can well believe that you came out of the streets—you act like it and you talk like it. I am only amazed you could have produced such a child as Bruce.”

Amber gasped, completely taken aback at that. Lord Carlton had never told her that his wife knew she was the boy’s mother. And yet she did know and had never said a word to anyone, had not refused to have him about her, and seemed to love him as sincerely as if he had been her own.

Good Lord! the woman was a greater fool even than she had thought!

“So you did know that he’s mine! Well, now you know me too, and I wonder how you like knowing that one day my son will be Lord Carlton—everything your husband has and is will belong to my child, not to yours! How d’you like that, eh? Are you so damned virtuous and noble that it doesn’t rankle in your flesh at all?”

“You know very well that’s impossible unless his legitimacy can be proved.”

She and Corinna stood very close, breathing each other’s breath, staring into each other’s eyes. Amber felt an overpowering desire to grab her by the hair, tear at her face, destroy her beauty and her very life. Something, she hardly knew what, held her in check.

“Will you please leave my rooms, madame,” said Corinna now, her lips so stiff with fury that though they shook they scarcely moved to form the words.

All at once Amber laughed, a high hysterical laugh of fury and nervous repression. “Listen to her!” she cried. “Yes, I’ll leave your rooms! I can’t get away from you too soon!” With swift jerky movements she gathered up the muff and fan she had dropped and then turned once more to face Corinna, breathing hard, quivering in every muscle. She could no longer think but she began to say, half unconsciously, something she had long wanted to say to her.

“You’ll soon be lying-in, won’t you? Think of me sometimes then—Or d‘you imagine he’ll be waiting by your bed like a patient dog till you’re—”

She saw Corinna’s eyes close slowly, the irises rolling away. At that instant a man’s harsh voice cracked through the room.

“Amber!”

She whirled and saw Bruce striding toward her, looking gigantic in his fury. She started a little as though about to run, but he seized her by the shoulder, spun her around and at the same instant his other hand lashed out and struck her across the face. For an instant she was completely blind and then she caught a flashing glimpse of his face above her, contorted, ugly —and she knew that he was angry enough to kill her.