She gave a sigh. “Oh, Bruce! If only you’d listen to me!” And then all at once she bounced up and knelt facing him, determined that he should listen to her. Somehow he had always managed to stop her before—but not this time. This time he was going to hear her out. “Go off to the wars if you must, Bruce! But when it’s over sell your ships and stay here in London. With your hundred thousand and my sixty-six we’d be so rich we could buy the Royal Exchange for a summer pavilion. We could have the biggest finest house in London—and everyone who was anybody at all would come to our balls and suppers. We’d have a dozen coaches and a thousand servants and a yacht to sail to France in if we took the notion. We’d go to Court and you’d be a great man—Chancellor, or whatever you wanted, and I’d be a Lady of the Bedchamber. There wouldn’t be anyone in England finer than us! Oh, Bruce, darling—don’t you see? We’d be the happiest people in the world!”

She was so passionately convinced herself that she was positive she could convince him; and his answer was a painful disappointment.

“It would be fine,” he. said. “For a woman.”

“Oh!” she cried furiously. “You men! What do you want then!”

“I’ll tell you, Amber.” He sat up and looked at her. “I want something more than spending the next twenty-five years standing on a ladder with one man’s heels on my fingers and mine on the man’s beneath. I want to do something besides plot and scheme and intrigue with knaves and fools to get a reputation with men I despise. I want a little more than going from the theatre to a cock-fight to Hyde Park to Pall Mall and back over the same round the next day. Playing cards and poaching after anything that goes by in petticoats and a mask and serving my turn as the King’s pimp—” He made a gesture of disgust. “And finally dying of women and drink.”

“I suppose you think living in America will keep you from dying of women and drink!”

“Maybe not. But one thing I know—When I die it won’t be from boredom.”

“Oh, won’t it! I don’t doubt it’s mighty exciting over there with blackamoors and pirates and Newgate-birds and every other kind of ragamuffin!”

“It’s more civilized than you imagine—there are also a great many men of good family who left England during the Commonwealth, remember. And who are still leaving—for the same reason I am. It isn’t that I’m going there because I think the men and women in America are better or different from what they are in England; they’re the same. It’s because America is a country that’s still young and full of promise, the way England hasn’t been for a thousand years. It’s a country that’s waiting to be made by the men who’ll dare to make it—and I intend getting there while I can help make it my way. In the Civil Wars my father lost everything that had belonged to our family for seven centuries. I want my children to have something they can’t lose, ever.”

“Well, then, why trouble yourself to fight for England—since you love her so little!”

“Amber, Amber,” he said softly. “My dear, someday I hope you’ll know a great many things you don’t know now.”

“And someday I hope you’ll sink in.your damned ocean!”

“No doubt I’m too great a villain to drown.”

She jumped off the bed in a fury, but suddenly she stopped, turned and looked at him as he lay leaning on his elbow and watching her. And then she came back and sat down again, covering his hand with both of hers.

“Oh, Bruce, you know I don’t mean that! But I love you so —I’d die for you—and you don’t seem to need me at all, the way I need you! I’m nothing but your whore—I want to be your wife, really your wife! I want to go where you go, and share your troubles and plan with you for what you want, and bear your children—I want to be part of you! Oh, please, darling! Take me to America with you! I don’t care what it’s like, I swear I don’t! I’ll live in anything! I’ll do anything! I’ll help you cut down trees and plant tobacco and cook your meals—Oh, Bruce! I’ll do anything, if only you’ll take me with you!”

For a moment he continued to stare at her, his eyes glittering, but just when she thought she had convinced him he shook his head and got up. “It would never work out that way, Amber. It’s not your kind of life and in a few weeks or months you’d get tired of it, and then you’d hate me for bringing you.”

She ran after him, throwing herself before him, grabbing frantically at the happiness that seemed just to elude her fingers but which she was sure she could catch. “No, I wouldn’t, Bruce! I swear it! I promise you! I’d love anything if you were there!”

“I can’t do it, Amber. Let’s not talk about it.”

“Then you’ve got another reason! You have, haven’t you? What is it?”

He was suddenly impatient and faintly angry. “For the love of God, Amber, let it go! I can’t do it. That’s all.”

She looked at him for a long .minute, her eyes narrowed. “I know why,” she said slowly at last. “I know why you won’t take me over there, and why you won’t marry me. It’s because I’m a farmer’s niece and you’re a nobleman. My father was only a yeoman, but your family was sitting in the House of Lords before there was one. My mother was just a plain simple woman, but your mother was a Bruce and descended from no one less than Holy Moses himself. My relatives are farmers—but you’ve got some Stuart blood in you, if you look hard enough to find it.” Her voice was sarcastic and bitter, and as she talked her mouth twisted, giving an ugly expression to her face.

She turned angrily away and began to pull on the rest of her clothes, while he watched her. There was a kind of tenderness on his face now and he seemed to be trying to think of something to say to her that would help take away the painful sense of humiliation she felt. But she gave him no opportunity to speak. In only two or three minutes she was dressed and then as she picked up her cloak she cried: “That’s why, isn’t it!”

He stood facing her. “Oh, Amber, why must you always make things hard for yourself? You know as well as I do that I couldn’t marry you if I wanted to. I can’t marry just for myself. I’m not alone in the world, floating in space like a speck of dust. I’ve got relatives by the score—and I’ve got a responsibility to my parents who are dead and to their parents. The Bruces and Carltons mean nothing to you—and there’s no reason why they should —but they’re damned important to the Bruces and Carltons.”

“That wheedle won’t pass with me! You wouldn’t marry me even if you could! Would you!”

They stared at each other; and then his answer cracked out, surprising as the sharp report of a pistol.

“No!”

For an instant Amber continued looking at him, but her face had turned beet-red and the blue cords throbbed in her throat and forehead. “Oh!” she screamed, almost hysterical with rage and pain. “I hate you, Bruce Carlton! I hate you—I—” She turned and rushed from the room, slamming the door after her. “I hope I never see you again!” she sobbed to herself as she dashed headlong down the stairs. And she told herself that this was the end—the last insult she would take from him—the last time he would ever—


Amber ran out of Almsbury House and straight to her coach. She jumped in. “Drive away!” she yelled at Tempest. “Home!” She flung herself back and began to cry distractedly, though with few tears, her teeth biting at the tips of her gloved hands.

She was so excited that she did not notice another coach waiting just outside the gates, with its wooden shutters closed, which started up and came rumbling along behind her own. And it stayed there, just behind her, following every turn, halting when her coach halted, proceeding at exactly the same rate of speed and never letting another coach come between them. They were almost home before Amber noticed that two of her footmen, who were hanging on the side, kept looking back and gesturing, apparently both puzzled and amused. She turned and glanced through the back window, saw the hackney behind them, but was not much concerned.

And then, as they turned through the great south gate of Dangerfield House, the impertinent hackney turned in also. Amber got out, still scowling in spite of her struggles to compose her face, and confronted Jemima who had just stepped down from the hackney. Carter was paying the driver.

“Good morning, Madame,” said Jemima.

Amber started off, and tossed Jemima what she hoped was a careless greeting. “Good morning, Jemima.” But her heart was pounding and she had a sick feeling of despair. The damned girl had been spying! And, what was worse, had caught her!

“Just a moment, Madame. Haven’t you time for a word with me? You were glad enough to be my friend—before Lord Carlton came.”

Amber stopped still, and then she turned around to face her step-daughter. There was nothing to do but try to brazen it out with her. “What’s Lord Carlton got to do with this?”

“Lord Carlton’s staying at Almsbury House. That’s why you were there just now—and day before yesterday and twenty other times this past month, for all I know!”

“Mind your own business, Jemima! I’m no prisoner here. I’ll come and go as I like. As it happens Lady Almsbury is a dear friend of mine—I was visiting her.”

“You didn’t visit her before Lord Carlton came to town!”

“She wasn’t here! She was in the country. Now look here, Jemima, I’ve a mighty good idea why you’ve been following me—and I’ve a mind to tell your father. He’ll take a course with you, I warrant.”

“You’ll tell Father! Suppose I tell him a few things I know—about you and Lord Carlton!”