Seeing Marianne spring indignantly to her feet, her cheeks on fire and her eyes flashing, he laughed and went on: 'Just as I thought. You are not flattered. But you are wrong, Deborah's voice was wonderful, like dark velvet – oh, the devil's in it! Didn't they teach you as a child that curiosity killed the cat?'

'That is enough!' Marianne cried, shaking with anger. 'Have the goodness to tell me, once and for all, the reason for this interview and let us make an end. What have you to tell me?'

He too had risen and came towards her.

'A question first, if I may. Why did you run away from England?'

'Are you unaware of what took place at Selton Hall on my wedding night?'

'No – but—'

'Then, how dare you ask me why I fled,' Marianne cried passionately, 'when you must know quite well that on that night I killed my husband and his cousin and set fire to the house! You know it so well in fact that you gave chase with the firm intention of delivering me up to the law.'

'I? Gave chase? I meant to deliver you up to the law?' Beaufort echoed with such evident bewilderment that Marianne began to feel a trifle foolish. However, she did let this deter her.

'Yes, you! I heard you talking, one night on the quay at Plymouth! You were with a little man in black and you said that at all events I could not get far and that the gallows awaited me!'

'What? Were you there? The devil, Marianne, have you some magic potion to make you invisible?'

'It does not matter. Did you say it or not?'

Jason was laughing now with real amusement. 'I certainly did! But just as certainly it does you no good to listen at keyholes, even when there aren't any. You little fool, I wasn't talking about you! That night I still knew nothing of your exploits!'

'Then who?'

'A wretched creature called Nell Woodbury, a trull from the back streets of London who killed my best topman and robbed him – one of the only two saved from the wreck of the Savannah Belle. It was she I was after. She had been traced to Plymouth where she was trying to get on board a vessel bound for the West Indies. And I found her.'

'And she—'

'Hanged,' Beaufort said shortly. 'She deserved nothing better. I would have killed her with my bare hands had she been let off. But enough of that. You have reminded me of something I should prefer to forget. And we were talking about you. What do you mean to do now?'

'Now?'

'Yes, now,' he said impatiently. 'Do you intend to remain here in this house? Dancing attendance on a feather-brained beauty – until, that is, my most serene friend should happen to notice that you are ravishing?'

Always the same assumption! Marianne's ill humour came flooding back. Could no one think of her in any light but that of Talleyrand's prospective mistress?

'What do you take me for—' she began.

'For a delightful girl with no more sense than I have in my little finger! My exquisite child, you have a genius for getting yourself into impossible situations. To tell the truth, you remind me of a little scatter-brain white seagull setting out blindly to cross the ocean taking it for nothing more than a creek and without the first idea what to do about it. I am telling you that if you stay here, sooner or later you will fall victim to that old lecher Talleyrand.'

'And I tell you I shall not! You spoke, just now, of my voice. It is to that I look for my escape. I am taking lessons every day and my teacher has promised that I shall sing, and triumph, in all the great theatres of Europe. He says I can become the greatest singer of the age!'

Beaufort shrugged.

'The theatre? Is it in the theatre you hope to find a place and a future worthy of you?' Jason's voice hardened. 'If you had the voice of the archangel Gabriel himself, I would beg you to remember who you are. The daughter of the Marquis d'Asselnat treading the boards! Are you mad, indeed, or merely half-witted?'

He was growing really angry now. Marianne saw the knuckles whiten below his lace cuffs and his hawk-like face harden unbelievably.

'Neither mad, nor half-witted,' Marianne raged at him. 'I want to be free, free, do you hear! Don't you understand that Marianne d'Asselnat is no more, that she is dead, that she died one night last autumn – and you killed her! How can you come here now and talk about my name and family? Did you think of that the night you played for me at cards, like a mere chattel, a slave to be disposed of at will? You cared little enough that night for the Marquis d'Asselnat, who died for his beliefs and for his king. You treated his daughter with no more respect than any sailor's drab!'

There were tears of rage and misery in her eyes and Jason recoiled before the violence of her attack. He had paled under his tan and was looking at her grief-stricken face with a kind of helpless pain.

'I did not know,' he said in a low voice. 'I swear to you, by my mother's memory, that I did not know. How could I have done?'

'Know what?'

'What you were like. I had never met you. What did I know of you? Your name, your family—'

'My fortune!' Marianne snapped viciously.

'Your fortune, to be sure. But Francis Cranmere and his friends I did know, and the lovely Ivy in particular. I knew them to be rotten to the core, utterly vicious and corrupt, without principle and without honour, wholly given over to the pleasures of sport, gaming and foolish wagers. How was I to guess that you were not the faithful copy of Ivy St Albans, a girl of noble birth and apparent purity, who was yet capable of giving herself to two complete strangers in a single night simply to get some money for her precious Francis? Francis was to marry you, why should you be any different? Birds of a feather, after all! And it seemed to me, Marianne, that you could not be other than Cranmere because you had consented to marry him, and because your friends had given you to him, knowing quite well what he was—'

'My friends?' Marianne said sadly. 'Never for one moment would Aunt Ellis have believed that the son of the one man she ever loved could be a worthless libertine. And she died, a week before my marriage. I was alone, in the power of a man who wanted only my money and you had no pity for me, you robbed me faster than he would have done!'

'It was not I who robbed you. It was he. I did not prompt him to stake your fortune.'

'But neither did you stop him! No, when he had nothing left to stake, you thought of me.'

'No! No, I swear to you! The idea came from Francis, it was his own suggestion to make you the stake in a final attempt to recover all.'

'And you agreed, naturally.'

'Why not? Since he had the effrontery to offer me your kisses and your person, he must know you would agree. Understand me, Marianne, I thought you as vicious as he was. Hadn't I heard him, a few days before your marriage, laughing and promising to lend you to Lord Moira when he himself had rubbed off some of your delicious bloom. And adding that he was confident of success with you? But had I known you, Marianne, I should never have agreed to play with him. I swear to you.'

'You swear too much,' Marianne said wearily. 'I do not ask you to – and I do not believe you. You saw me during the ceremony. Did I really look to you like a girl who would give herself to anyone?'

'No, you did not. But a woman's face may be deceptive, and – you were so beautiful. So very beautiful—'

Marianne gave a hard, contemptuous little laugh. 'I see. And the opportunity too was beautiful, was it not? It was so easy! You wanted me and you could have me with my own husband's blessing!'

Jason turned and walked slowly to the hearth. Marianne could not see his face but she saw the hands clasped behind his back tighten nervously.

In the few minutes silence which fell between them, Marianne was able to take stock of what he had just told her. The ignominy of Francis's offering her to his friend, even before their marriage, perhaps even in return for money. Ivy, prostituting herself so that her lover might live in luxury. Into what a sink had she fallen, and how little compunction she felt now for the death of those two! They had not deserved to live. Suddenly Jason spoke fiercely, still with his back to her.

'I admit it. I did want you, wanted you more than I thought I could want anything again! Wanted you so much that I was ready, in return for just one night of love, to give up the fortune I had won against all hope and of which I stood in such desperate need. Had I lost, I had lost everything – and you would have had your wedding night as though nothing had happened, though a little late maybe, and afterwards been handed over graciously to Lord Moira! But for a little while, you were more to me than the whole world, more than my own future, more than fortune! You were my fortune – and I would have been fool enough to give it all back to you in return for the joy of holding you for a few hours in my arms.'

Marianne was stirred despite her anger by the depth of passion in his voice. Silence fell once more inside the pretty room. In the hearth, a log split asunder and collapsed in a pool of red embers. The American stood very still but it seemed to Marianne that his broad shoulders drooped and bowed, as though under the force of some strong feeling. For a moment, she was tempted to go to him and try and find out how much sincerity was in his words, but she was too distrustful, too much on her guard against men's wiles. And this man was the architect of all her wretchedness. She could not forget that. It was time to make an end.