But time went on and still we had no child. I had seen Jean-Louis look at Dickon sometimes, with that rather wistful look in his eyes. He, too, was inclined to spoil the boy. It might have been because he was the only child in the family.

I did not take to Dickon in the same way and I never tried to analyze my feelings until afterward, when I started to become introspective—looking for reasons and finding only excuses. Could I have been jealous of him? My mother, whom I had loved only slightly less than my glamorous father, cared greatly for Dickon … more, I suspected, than she did for me, her own child. It was something to do with that long-ago romance with Dickon’s father, but it was Sabrina who had had his child.

Our moods and emotions—Jean-Louis’s and mine—were woven together in an intricate web and at this time I was not concerned with them. I was still the old Zipporah—quiet, unassuming, above all predictable.

When we reached the house my mother was waiting for us. She embraced me warmly; she was always tender toward me, but I think because she was so sure I would always do what was expected, and she would have no need to worry about me, she could dismiss me from her thoughts.

“It was lovely of you to come. Zipporah dear. And you too, Jean-Louis,” she said.

Jean-Louis took her hand and kissed it. He was always very grateful to my mother and had never stopped showing it.

That was because she had kept him when he was a very young boy and had been terrified of being taken away to go off with his own mother, who could not have been a very pleasant person because she had been involved in some murder mystery. But that was years ago.

“I want to show you Lord Eversleigh’s letter,” she said. “I don’t know what you’ll think about it. It will be strange if he should leave Eversleigh to you, Zipporah.”

“I can’t think he will. There must be someone else.”

“We seem to have lost touch since your great-grandparents died. Yet Eversleigh used to be the very heart of the family. It’s strange how things change.”

It was indeed strange. Things had certainly changed when my father had disappeared suddenly from my life. Although my life had been so uneventful, there had been a time when I had lived on the fringe of great events. I should never forget my father; after all, I had been ten years old when he had gone. That was twenty years ago, but a man like him could never be forgotten. I had loved him more than anyone. He never cosseted me as my mother had done. He had laughed a great deal, had smelt of sandalwood and had always been exquisitely dressed, being what was known as a dandy. I had thought he was the most handsome person in the world. It was unfair—I knew even then—but I would have bartered all the loving care and attention of my mother for five minutes with him. He had never asked how I was getting on with lessons; it had never occurred to him that I might catch cold. He used to talk to me of his gambling feats. He had constantly gambled and he had made me feel the excitement which gripped him. He had treated me as though I were one of his cronies instead of his little daughter. He used to take me riding. We would race together and we had made little bets. He would bet I could not throw a conker a certain distance; he would wager things carelessly—the pin in his cravat, one of his rings, even a coin … anything that was to hand. My mother had hated it. I heard her say more than once: “You will teach the child to be a gambler like yourself.”

I had hoped he would. There was nothing I wanted so much as to be exactly like him. He had gaiety and great charm which came from a certain carelessness toward life. Nothing had ever appeared to perturb him; he had shrugged his shoulders at life and later he had had the same attitude toward death. I did not know how he went to his death on that early morning—but I could guess.

That event devastated our household, though there had been rumblings of disaster before it happened. I couldn’t help overhearing certain things. I knew that he had died—as the servants said—defending my mother’s honor. This was because a man had died and in his bedroom had been found something belonging to my mother that indicated she had been with him at the time of his death.

It had been the end of a way of life—deeply upsetting to a girl of ten. We had gone to the country—not that that was new to me. We had always spent some part of the summer at Clavering Hall because it was part of my father’s country estate.

Terrible days they had been, and made more so because I knew only half the story. Sabrina was involved in it. I heard her once say to my mother: “Oh, Clarissa, I am to blame for all this.” And I knew that she had been the one in the dead man’s bedroom, though everyone had thought it was my mother, and my father had died for that reason.

It had been bewildering, and when I asked questions I was told by Nanny Curlew—whom I had inherited from Sabrina—that little children should be seen and not heard. I was careful, for Nanny Curlew could relate gruesome stories of what happened to naughty children. If they listened to what was not intended for them, their ears grew long so that everyone knew what they had done; and those who grimaced or scowled or put out their tongues—unless told to by nurse or doctor—were often “struck all of a heap” and stayed like that for the rest of their lives. Being a logical little girl I did say that I had never seen anyone with enormous ears and a tongue hanging out. “You wait,” she had said darkly, and looked at me so suspiciously that I hastily went to a looking glass to make sure that my ears had not grown and that my tongue was still mobile.

Somebody said that time is the great healer, and that is certainly true, for if it does not always heal, it dims the memory and softens the pain; and after a while I became accustomed to my father’s absence; I settled into the country life at Clavering. After all, I had my mother, Sabrina and Jean-Louis as well as the redoubtable and omnipotent Nanny Curlew. I accepted life. I did what was expected of me; I rarely questioned why. I once heard Sabrina say to my mother: “At least Zipporah has never given you a moment’s anxiety, and I’ll be ready to swear never will.” At first I was delighted to hear this but later it made me ponder.

Then I was of age and there were dances and at one of these Jean-Louis showed himself capable of jealousy because he thought I was too interested in one of the sons of a neighboring squire. Then we decided we would marry, but Jean-Louis didn’t want to do it while he was still under my mother’s roof. He was proud and independent. He was working on the estate and doing well. Tom Staples said he didn’t know how he’d manage without him; then Tom Staples suddenly had a heart attack and died. The estate manager’s job and house became vacant, so Jean-Louis stepped into his shoes. He managed the estate and took over the house which went with the post, and there was no reason then why we shouldn’t be married right away.

That had happened more than ten years ago in the fatal year of ’45. Drama touched us then in the return of the love of my mother’s youth who had been transported to Virginia thirty years before for his part in the ’15 rebellion. I was so immersed in my own marriage at the time that I only vaguely realized what was happening and that the returning Dickon was the young lover of whom my mother had dreamed all through her life—even when she was married to that most desirable of men, my father. Alas, for her, the lover of her youth fell in love with Sabrina, married her, and young Dickon was the result.

My poor mother! I realize her sufferings far more now than I did then. Sabrina came back to my mother after Culloden. Then Dickon was born—that was ten years ago—and Sabrina and my mother lived together in Clavering Hall, and I know now—understanding people’s emotions so much more than I did before my own adventure—that they saw in him the Dickon they had both lost. Perhaps that brought them some consolation. But I was beginning to believe that it was having an adverse effect on Dickon’s character.

So Jean-Louis and I were married, and he was a good husband to me; ours was the typical country existence; we went on, untroubled by outside events; there might be wars in Europe in which the country was involved but they affected us very little. We went from season to season, from Good Friday gloom to Easter rejoicing, to summer church fêtes on the lawn if the weather was good and in our vaulted hall if it were bad, to harvest festivals when everyone vied to produce the finest fruits and vegetables for display, to Christmas and all its rejoicing. That was our life.

Until this day when we had the message from Eversleigh Court.

My mother was pleased to see us as she always was.

“I’m so glad you could come today,” she said. “I do want to talk to you about poor old Carl. Sabrina has given you an inkling, hasn’t she? I am so sorry for him. He sounds so pathetic in his letter.”

She slipped one arm through mine and the other through that of Jean-Louis.

“I thought just a family party so that we could really talk. Just Sabrina, myself and the two of you. Jean-Louis, dear, I do hope you will be able to manage to go with Zipporah.”

Jean-Louis then began to launch into a description of the problems of the estate. He loved talking about them because they were of such paramount importance to him. He glowed with enthusiasm and I knew it would be a great sacrifice for him to spare time from it.

We went into the hall—which was very fine and, as usual in such buildings, the central feature of the house. It was a large house—meant for a big family. My mother would have liked Sabrina to marry again and live there with her children; I am sure she would have liked Jean-Louis and me to come there and have a family. That was what she wanted to be, the center of a big family; and all we had was Dickon.