Tessa shook her head. ‘No, really, I couldn’t.’

But at that moment a service door opened somewhere at the back and lifting her head, her nostrils flaring in the manner of Baudelaire when he smelled the fleurs du mal, she said raptly, ‘Rindfleisch suppe!’

It was too much, and abandoning further protest she let herself be led to the double doors of the dining-room.

Inside, however, a reverse awaited them. The terrifying Frau Sacher, black-clad and omnipresent, came towards them, stared at Tessa and hissed angrily to Guy, ‘You cannot bring her into the public dining room!’

Fury gripped Guy. Surely the woman could see that Tessa, though dressed like a dancing-girl, was not of their kind? But anxious above all not to subject the child to a scene, he allowed himself to be led upstairs and within moments the door was opened on an image from one of Tessa’s most fervent dreams.

‘Oh!’ she breathed. ‘All my life I have wanted to dine in a chambre séparée.’

Entranced, she looked at the red plush walls, the snowy damask, the alcove with its discreetly looped curtains of gold-tasselled brocade. This was life as she had conceived it: Sarah Bernhardt, the Duse, were now sisters under the skin.

But when she had sat for a while in a chair that Guy had pulled out for her, she fell silent. A cloud passed over her face.

‘Is anything the matter?’

‘No… Only… would you mind very much if we changed places?’ Guy, following her gaze, found that Tessa was confronting the portrait of an obese and haughty lady whose plump bosom was bisected by the Order of St Boniface. Narrowing his eyes to read the title, he learned that he was in the presence of Her Imperial Highness, the Archduchess Frederica.

‘Certainly.’ Guy rose and the change was effected. ‘Your republicanism again?’ he enquired politely.

Tessa nodded. She was now staring with every appearance of pleasure at a painting of Leda welcoming with unmistakable concupiscence the attentions of the swan.

‘Yes, but this lady at least is enjoying herself,’ she said, answering Guy’s grin.

It was an agreeable meal. Someone, somewhere, had taught this waif the art of conversation. Tessa touched him with her ardent belief in art as the passport to man’s freedom and happiness, but she could be very funny about the International Opera Company’s preparations for their exciting and mysterious assignment. And she could listen. Guy, telling her about his travels in Brazil, saw her almost visibly drinking in his descriptions of that fabled, exotic land.

But as the meal drew towards its close, he noticed her small face slewing round more and more to the object only partially concealed by the half-drawn curtains in the alcove: an object which, without blazoning it to the world, was not really a couch or a sofa — was, by its width, the humped softness of its pillows… was, in short… a bed.

The waiter brought coffee and a liqueur for Guy, and closed the door with finality. Requesting permission to smoke, Guy watched, concealing his amusement, as the highly expressive face of the little wardrobe mistress registered in rapid succession a series of emotions: apprehension, followed by resolution, followed again by a flicker of despair.

‘Do people often bother you like that?’ he said, deciding to force the issue. ‘Like that old man just now?’

‘Well, a bit. It’s worse since Anita cut my hair.’ Her eyes slid back to the bed. It was awful not knowing how to behave, what was correct. That so handsome and wealthy a man — a man who clearly could have any woman he wished — should have any real interest in her seemed most unlikely. On the other hand, that so handsome a man — any man — should buy her a dinner, a three-course dinner with rindfleisch suppe and kalbsbraten which nowadays cost a week’s wages, and want nothing in return, seemed equally unlikely. Caught thus between Scylla and Charybdis, Tessa reached for her wineglass, gulped and plunged.

‘It is very difficult. You see, I believe that one must be completely generous. One must be like Sonia in Crime and Punishment when she went to Siberia with Raskalnikov, and like Isadora Duncan. I mean, not dancing in bare feet but giving. And like Madame Walewska with Napoleon. Everything must be given freely — money, property… oneself. But though I believe this absolutely when anyone… the second double-bass player or the electrician… or anyone wishes to,’ she went on, looking suddenly extremely miserable and somewhat wringing Guy’s withers, ‘I can’t, I absolutely can’t.’

Overcome by failure, she bent her head. Silky lashes curtained downcast eyes, and in the whispered murmur which now escaped her Guy, hair-raisingly, caught the name of Professor Freud.

With some regret, for it was burning beautifully, Guy now extinguished his cigar. Then he leaned over and laid his strong, chiselled fingers briefly on Tessa’s clenched knuckles, whitened by confession and strain.

‘Tessa, I promise you that one day it will not be like that. One day somebody will come — not the second double-bass player or the electrician, but somebody. And you won’t have to think about being like Isadora Duncan or going to Siberia and you certainly won’t have to trouble poor Professor Freud. When that person comes, whoever he is, all the fear and doubt will go and you’ll know.’

‘Will I?’ Her face, wistful yet trusting, was turned to his. ‘Are you sure?’ Yet even as she spoke she felt, with a strange kind of puzzlement, that the question already belonged to the past.

‘I’m sure,’ said Guy. And meaning only to reassure her, he added, ‘as for me, my dear, I promise I mean you no harm. In fact, I am waiting for someone to join me here in Vienna — someone I love and hope soon to marry.’ He paused and Tessa drew in her breath, seeing what Martha had first seen in the child of six: the lightening of his eyes to a lyrical and tender blue. Then he rose and pulled the red curtains firmly across the alcove. ‘So you see, you are perfectly safe!’

Tessa smiled. ‘I’m glad,’ she said, and took one of the crystallized plums from the box he held out to her.

She was glad. She was very glad. She was happy. Nothing was going to happen, not ever. He loved someone else.

Odd, though, that happiness should feel so much like a weight pressing against her chest; odd that the room looked suddenly a little misty.

Odd, too, that when she so much liked Karlsbad plums, the one she was eating should taste as if it had been dug out of an Egyptian tomb.

6

Nerine and her brother arrived in Vienna with fourteen pieces of luggage and a cowed maid called Pooley. Nerine was pleased with the suite Guy had engaged for them at the Grand Hotel, rather less pleased when only three days later he informed them that they were leaving for the country.

The country — even the dazzlingly beautiful landscape of Lower Austria — did not figure high on Nerine’s list of priorities. Though Vienna was sadly changed from the Imperial capital she had known as a girl, there were always amusements of some sort to be found in the city.

Nevertheless, she made no attempt to delay their departure. Guy had been a courteous host in Vienna but he had not, so to speak, shown his hand. True, there were flowers in her hotel room but no gift of jewels, no offer to take her shopping, no hint of the fabled wealth with which he had been credited. If, as seemed likely, he now expected her to join some drunken businessmen in a damp hunting lodge somewhere in a forest, or don a dirndl and act the village maiden, he would find himself disappointed. Marie Antoinette playing at being a milkmaid was not to Nerine’s taste. And if things went wrong there was always Lord Frith, languishing for love of her in Scotland.

Now she sat beside Guy who was driving the Hispano-Suiza himself, with Arthur dozing in the back. A second car, driven by Morgan and carrying the rest of the luggage, followed behind. It was the seventeenth of June and the countryside through which they drove was straight out of one of Schubert’s more ecstatic songs. Mill-wheels raced in emerald rivers; larks ascended, linden trees spread their murmuring crowns over ancient wells — and in the distance, glimpsed for an instant and then lost again, was the snow-glitter of the Alps.

She threw a glance at Guy, who was unusually silent, and sighed. He really was amazingly attractive with that caged-wild-beast look, those strong hands lying so easily on the steering wheel. No one, looking at him, would ever guess that he had been found in the gutter. That was one thing she would have to cure him of, telling everyone about his birth. It did no good, that kind of thing, it only embarrassed people.

They lunched in the courtyard of an inn from whose every window there tumbled petunias, geraniums and tousled orange marigolds, and then continued their journey.

The golden morning was turning into a wild grey afternoon, the peaks shrouded in cloud, and now with the suddenness of mountain weather, the sky opened to release a torrent of rain.

Guy, driving carefully through the downpour, listening to the windscreen-wiper’s slow adagio, had to fight down a sudden sense of desolation. He had hazarded so much on Nerine’s first glimpse.

Then, as dramatically as it had begun, the rain stopped, the clouds parted and in the new-washed, azure sky there appeared a perfect rainbow.

It was thus that Nerine, stepping out of the car where Guy had halted it beside the lake, first saw the castle: its towering, fairy-tale pinnacles spanned by a radiant, multi-coloured arc.

‘Good heavens, Guy, that’s Pfaffenstein, isn’t it?’ Her lovely head was tilted upward, her voice reverent. ‘Frau von Edelnau had a picture of it in her dining-room.’