The Drop of the Dice (Will You Love Me in September?) (45 page)

I did not sleep all night. I wanted to go with Lance to the park, but he would not allow that.

‘You must not be there,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back with you soon. Then I promise you we’ll leave London. We’ll go to the country and take Sabrina with us. We’ll take Zipporah and Jean-Louis and forget this nightmare.’

It was dawn when he left the house in the company of Jack Etherington, a friend of long standing, who was to act as his second.

I sat at the window, waiting…waiting…

I was there when they carried him in. He was bleeding profusely from a wound in his side. I scarcely recognized him. He looked so unlike the jaunty man I had known with the insouciant smile, who had never really taken life seriously.

He had to take it seriously now, for I feared he was about to leave it.

‘I’ve sent someone for a doctor,’ said Jack Etherington. ‘We’d better get him to bed.’

The moments seemed to drag interminably. Lance was looking at me, trying to speak. I bent my head down so that I could hear him.

He said: ‘It was the only way. Understand, Clarissa. I was too slow. He got me first.’

‘The doctor will come,’ I told him. ‘You’ll be better then.’

He smiled, and as he did so I saw the blood on his lips, and that frightened me more than seeing him lying there.

The doctor came. He shook his head gravely. The bullet was too deeply embedded. He could not remove it. Besides, Lance had lost too much blood.

There was no hope and there could only be an hour or two left to him.

So Lance, the gallant gentleman, the exquisite dandy, the inveterate gambler, was dying, and his death was typical of the way he had lived. It made me bitterly angry to think of how he had thrown his life away… uselessly, unnecessarily. But that was Lance.

I heard Jack Etherington say that Blaydon was preparing to get out of the country quickly. That could only mean that he knew he had killed Lance.

Lance lingered for a few hours, and during that time he was lucid and talked to me a little. I told him to preserve his breath but it seemed to comfort him to talk.

‘Oh Clarissa, my Clarissa,’ he said. ‘I loved you always, you know. Still, it wasn’t what we looked for… not quite, was it? There were shadows between us… I was the gambler. I couldn’t stop. I wanted to… for you. I know how you hated it. But I went on… and on. It was between us, wasn’t it… the barrier…? There’ll be debts, Clarissa. I would have paid them… in time… out of winnings.’

Later he said: ‘For you there was Dickon. You never forgot him, did you? I knew he was there. A shadowy ghost in our house… at our table… in our bedchamber. Those were the shadows between, Clarissa. But it was good… all the same, it was good.’

I kissed his lips and his brow. He smiled faintly.

I bent over him and said quietly: ‘Lance, it was wonderful:’

And he closed his eyes and passed away.

I
T WAS NEARLY TEN
years since Lance had died. I was completely shattered by his death; so was Sabrina. I saw the old fear in her eyes which I had detected all those years ago when Damans had died.

‘What is it about me?’ she cried to me. ‘Why is it that I am fated to bring disaster? There was my mother. I was indirectly responsible for her death. And now… Lance. If I had not thought of marrying Reggie, I should never have gone to that house that night. I should not have left the stole behind, and Lance would be alive this day.’

‘It is not your fault that things happened the way they did,’ I insisted.

‘But why me? Why should I be the one every time to bring disaster and death?’

‘You saved my life. Don’t forget that. I never shall.’

‘Oh, Clarissa, I’m so unhappy. There is a terrible guilt on me.’

‘No,’ I cried. ‘You must not feel this. Be sensible, Sabrina.’

The task of bringing her out of that terrible gloom was mine, just as it had been all those years ago, and I felt more than ever that our lives were inextricably woven together. I was closer to her even than to my beloved daughter Zipporah.

Zipporah was soft and feminine and yet strangely enough more equipped to take care of herself than Sabrina was… she had her friendship with Jean-Louis and I think, in her heart, was more fond of him than of anyone else.

Sabrina did not marry Reggie. After that dreadful night she could not bear to be with him. It reminded her too much. Poor Reggie was heartbroken. He went abroad to some members of his family—in Sweden, I think. But Sabrina had done something for him, I was sure. She had restored a certain confidence to him, but perhaps that was partly due to the fact that his father of whom he had been in such obvious awe, was dead. However, he went out of our lives; I sold the house in Albemarle Street and we settled in the country. I decided we would live there quietly, away from the social scene, although, after the manner of such affairs, the scandal of Sir Ralph’s death was soon forgotten.

During those ten years Priscilla and Leigh had died and Uncle Carl came home to take over the management of the Eversleigh estates. Occasionally I went to see him, but it was a sad business now that Arabella, Carleton, Priscilla and Leigh were no longer there.

The old generation passed on; the new ones were coming up. I myself was now forty-three years old and Sabrina herself was thirty. People were amazed that she had never married. Such a beautiful young woman, they said of her. She had had her admirers, of course, but I was sure that contemplating marriage brought back to her too vividly that scene in the bedroom, and always she shied away from it.

We were together so much, it seemed as though we knew each other’s thoughts, and what we wanted now was to live in peaceful security in the country. It suited us all and we did not miss the house in Albemarle Street. We threw ourselves into the life of the country; we entertained and were entertained by people we knew, who were not always those we had known in Lance’s day. There was no gambling at our house—except the occasional game of whist which was played merely for amusement. I had a stillroom and interested myself in the garden, particularly in growing herbs. It was the sort of life I had been brought up to in Eversleigh and although I was not ecstatically happy I was serene and at peace.

I was delighted to see the bond between my daughter and Jean-Louis grow stronger with the years. It was taken for granted that they would marry in due course. They were eager to do so but Jean-Louis wanted to be sure he could afford to keep a wife first. Jean-Louis was very independent. He knew the story of his mother’s deception, of course, and I think that made him more determined than ever to stand on his own feet. He had always had a great interest in the estate and before Lance’s death had learned a good deal about it from Tom Staples who was Lance’s very excellent manager. When Lance had died, Tom had managed for us with Jean-Louis’s help; and when Tom died I offered the job to Jean-Louis and he accepted it with alacrity. As there was a pleasant house that went with the job, he would now have a home of his own.

That was what he had been waiting for. I knew that he and Zipporah would now marry.

They were happy months before the wedding. Zipporah, Sabrina and I spent long hours refurnishing the manager’s house. It was good to see my daughter so happy and I had no doubt that she had chosen the right man, one whom she had known and loved throughout her childhood. They had had the same interests, the same upbringing. I did not see how the marriage could fail.

I wished that Lance could have been there to see our daughter’s happiness.

It was the beginning of the year 1745. I had said Zipporah should have waited for the summer. ‘June is the month for weddings,’ I added.

She had opened those lovely violet-coloured eyes very wide and said: ‘Dear mother, what does the time matter!’

She was right, of course; so the wedding was to be at the beginning of March.

‘Spring will be in the air,’ Zipporah reminded me.

I thought how wonderful it was to be young and in love and about to be married to the man of one’s choice. My thoughts went back to Dickon and once again I was wondering what my life would have been like if I had married him.

It was absurd to go on dreaming after thirty years.

The day before the wedding arrived, the house was full of the bustle of preparation; the smell of roasting meats and baking pies and all sorts of preparation filled the house. The guests began to arrive. Zipporah had wanted a traditional wedding with blue and green ribbons and sprigs of rosemary.

I was taken back all those years to the day I had married Lance. I remembered the haunting uncertainties which had beset me and how, when I had stood at the altar with Lance, it had seemed as though Dickon was at my side, watching reproachfully.

Soon Sabrina and I would be alone. It would be strangely quiet without Zipporah and Jean-Louis. I should miss my daughter’s bright presence greatly. But she would not be far away and I should see her often. And Sabrina and I would be together. I was always uneasy about Sabrina nowadays. I thought she should marry and have children. That would have been the life for her.

I wondered often whether she regretted not marrying. She took solitary rides. I wondered then did she brood on all that marriage might have offered; was she beginning to think her life was wasted? Now that Zipporah was getting married, did I detect a certain wistfulness in her eyes?

I was thinking about Sabrina when I heard her calling me.

I wondered why she did not come to my room so I went to the top of the staircase and there in the hall was Sabrina and beside her was a man.

I went down the stairs. There was something about him which seemed familiar.

I cried: ‘Can it be…?’

He turned to me and smiled. His eyes, I noticed, were of the same intense blue that I remembered.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it is. And you are Clarissa.’

‘Dickon!’ I whispered, unbelieving.

‘Returned to the home of his fathers,’ he said. Then he took my face in his hands and looked into my face.

I was immediately apprehensive. I had aged considerably and could not bear much resemblance to the girl he had known all those years ago. There were shadows under my eyes, and lines which had not been there when he had last seen me. I was long past my first youth.

And him? He had changed too. He was no longer the boy I had known. His lean, spare figure, his deeply bronzed face, the hair which was not so plentiful as it had been and had flecks of white in it. But the eyes were as brightly blue as ever and they burned with an intensity of feeling which I felt must match my own.

Sabrina was saying: ‘I found him looking at the house. He has come to see you. He went to Eversleigh and Carl told him where to come to find you. When he saw me, he thought I was you.’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I thought I recognized you.’

‘There must be a family resemblance. After all, we are cousins.’

‘I am so delighted to have found you.’

We were tongue-tied. I suppose after all the emotion we had shared and the passage of years that was inevitable.

‘You have come in time to dance at my daughter’s wedding,’ I said.

‘Yes, Sabrina told me.’

They smiled at each other; and I felt pleased because they liked each other. ‘This is wonderful,’ he said.

And so it was. Dickon was back.

I suppose what happened was inevitable. I should have seen it coming. When he had gone away I had been an innocent girl, very young. Sabrina had only just been born. When he came back he found an ageing woman, one whose own daughter was just married. He would have been thinking of that young girl all through the years. She would be ageless in his imagination. Surely he could not have expected me to have remained as I was before he went away? Perhaps he had forgotten the passing of time. He would have expected a certain maturity, of course. Perhaps he thought to find me looking like Sabrina.

Zipporah and Jean-Louis had left for the house on the estate. They were absorbed in each other. The guests departed. Dickon stayed with us. I had an idea that this would be a spring like no other.

I loved Dickon. I always had, and not even time and space could change my love for him. He had begun as an ideal and he continued so. As he talked to us, I caught glimpses of the old Dickon, the Dickon whom I had loved all those years ago and who had continued to haunt my life in the years between.

I knew that he had felt the same. I knew that he had come back for me.

We talked a great deal about his life in Virginia. He made us see the forests of arctic pine and balsam; he talked vividly of the plantations to which he had been assigned. He had found a certain consolation for exile in hard work.

‘I used to count the hours, the days, the weeks, the years,’ he told us. ‘Always there was the dream of coming home.’

He had worked with cotton and, finding it interesting, had worked hard; he was given promotion; his master appreciated him, and added to his responsibilities as the years passed. In time it was not like captivity at all.

‘If I had not wanted to come home so badly, I might have become reconciled,’ he said.

The climate was benign; he had been free to ride when he wished to. He loved to see the animals—the buffalo and elk, red and grey foxes, muskrats and weasels; he loved the opossums and often saw black bears in the Appalachians.

He used to fish in Chesapeake Bay for sturgeon and trout as well as cod and King mackerel. ‘We would catch the fish and cook and eat it right there in the bay,’ he told us.

In time he had been taken into his master’s house and treated as one of the family.

‘You never married,’ said Sabrina.

‘No… but there was the daughter of the house. She was a widow with a young son. She reminded me of you, Clarissa. When her father died I took over the management of the place. We might have married… but always I had this dream of coming home.’

Those were happy days. I felt uplifted. He had come home for me and all the years when I had thought of him, he had been thinking of me.

I looked at my face in the mirror and wondered how different I was from that young girl. I had aged considerably. But so had he. Who does not in thirty years? We were mellowed, mature now… but that should be no barrier to understanding.