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“I don’t! I don’t want to go on with it as a career, that’s all!”

“Nor will you ever be Mrs. Robert Chaddox! You can’t change what you are. If he looks down on me, he’ll look down on you. Once I’ve used him to contest the will, you won’t even have Daniel’s money to offer him!”

“Please don’t, Madge.”

Sarah went into her own room and shut the door firmly behind her. What a fool she was, she thought. She had been so sure that when Robert knew she hadn’t lied to him, everything would be all right and she would marry him and live happily ever after. Whereas he had walked out without a single word to her, and her stepmother’s spite would see to it that he never wanted to again!

More than ever, Sarah missed her father that night. She lay awake, trying to make up her mind why Madge should dislike her. The only answers she could find distressed her, but she thought they were probably the right ones, and her father was the only one who could have taken the pain out of the knowledge. Sarah knew that she was a better actress than her stepmother and how unbearable that was to her. It was worse still now that she wanted to give up the stage, and she thought it possible that Madge saw that as a rejection of herself, rather than the hours and the exclusiveness of being always amongst theatre people.

The other answer was her stepmother’s dislike of feeling uncomfortable. She had been obliged to admit —and with Robert there too!—that she had deliberately made use of her stepdaughter and had ignored her husband’s illness merely to keep in touch with a producer whom she thought would be useful to her career. She wouldn’t like them to think badly of her no matter what she had done. If she thought they despised her, her revenge would be as terrible as she could make it.

Sarah winced away from dwelling on the ugliness she had discovered. It was hard to believe that life would go on just the same despite the burden of her new knowledge. In a few weeks she would find she was able to accept her stepmother as she was. It was only now, when the discovery that someone close to her was less than noble had exploded over her, that she was shocked and humiliated. That it had been all the worse because Robert had witnessed the shock and the humiliation was something that grew on her as the night wore on. By dawn she had begun to think that she could never face him ever again !

Long before her stepmother was awake, Sarah pulled herself out of her crumpled bed and dressed herself in jeans and a sweater, slipping out of the house and away from the atmosphere that had become intolerable to her. She walked down the road towards the centre of the village, not sure where to go, but one of the acorn signs of the North Down Way to Dover caught her eye and she turned down the lane towards the path, glad to have a positive destination to aim for.

She didn’t hear the car coming down the lane behind her until it was only a few feet away from her. She flattened herself against the hedge, barely looking up, and was all the more surprised when it pulled up beside her and the door opened for her to get in.

“Sarah, are you going my way?”

She nodded briefly, without looking at him, knowing only that she was pleased to see him whatever he thought of her, just because he was Robert.

“Are you always going to be so forgiving?” he asked her somewhat wryly.

She didn’t answer immediately. Then she said, “Which way are you going?”

“I don’t know. I caught sight of you trudging along as though your life depended on it, and I hopped into the car and came after you.”

“I was going to walk to Dover,” she told him.

His eyebrows rose. “What about your stepmother’s breakfast?”

“I don’t see that as any of my concern,” she retorted. “Besides, she’s asleep.”

“Why aren’t you?”

“I—I couldn’t—”

“You shouldn’t let her upset you.”

She wriggled uncomfortably. “You’re a fine one to talk! How often did Neil’s mother succeed in upsetting you? And without witnesses!”

He smiled, amused. “More times than I care to remember. And there usually were witnesses, especially, at the beginning, before I grew a hide tough enough to deal with her. Your skin isn’t very thick, is it?”

“I thought it was,” she began impulsively. “I thought I was immune because I hardly ever saw her. Do you know I think I’d forgotten—” She broke off, uneasily aware that she had said more than she meant to. “It— it doesn’t matter.”

“On the contrary, I think it does. A lot of things were made clear to me last night—”

“Oh?”

“Yes. I learned a lot about Sarah Blaney.”

“And I suppose you didn’t like what you learned?” she snapped.

He was surprised. “What makes you think that?”

“The way you just—walked out without a single word. You didn’t even say goodnight!” She tried to sound bright, but she wasn’t at all successful. It seemed to her that she had revealed far too much of the agony he had caused her. It wasn’t fair!
He
looked as calm as ever, and more than a little pleased with himself!
“Would you rather I’d stayed?”

“No, of course not,” she whispered. “It was bad enough as it was!”

‘‘That’s what I thought, my love. Nor would it have done for me to be as rude to Mrs. Blaney, as I should have been had I stayed.”

Sarah uttered a little giggle. “She hates being called Mrs. Blaney.”

He slowed the car, turning off into a little copse of trees. A few hundred yards further on the road petered out at the foot of a rounded chalk hill on which grazed a few sheep.

“Feel like climbing up to the top?” he asked her.

She accepted immediately, glad to be out of the car. In the open, she thought, she could stand back from him and think before she spoke. Perhaps there would be no need to speak at all, and that would be better still.

He started off ahead of her, pausing whenever the path grew rough, or slippery from the morning dew. Once he took her hand and pulled her up the slope towards him, apparently thinking of something else. Only afterwards he didn’t let go her hand again, and she didn’t like to reclaim it herself in case she reminded him that she was there when she was practically certain that he had forgotten all about her.

When they reached the top of the hill, she saw that the ground fell away far more sharply on the other side. In the far distance, lit by the early morning sun, she caught a glimpse of Canterbury Cathedral and some buildings that she took to be the new University of Kent. Nearer to her, in the valley below, was an Elizabethan farmhouse, with bulging walls and wavy roof, supported by a more modem wing that had been built on at the end. It was a peaceful scene and one that caught at her heartstrings when she thought of London and the life she had led there.

Robert spread his anorak on the ground and gestured an invitation for her to sit down on it. She did so, twisting nervously away from where he was sitting. In silence, he put an arm round her waist and pulled her back beside him.

“Are you ready to talk?” he asked in her ear.

“What is there to talk about?”

She felt rather than heard his laugh. “My dear girl, if you want to pretend you don’t know, you shouldn’t tremble whenever I come near you!”

She stiffened and flushed. “I don’t think that’s kind!” she rebuked him.

“I’m not a kind person,” he said. “Especially not where you’re concerned. One can only afford to be kind when one is indifferent to a woman. And I’m not indifferent to you, my Sarah. Far from it!”

She stole a glance at him and looked away again. “I told you I would be there waiting, but I’m not going to ask again,” she muttered crossly. “Besides, I shall quite understand if you find you don’t want to start again. It wasn’t very—pretty. You don’t have to have anything more to do with either of us.” She tried to struggle free from his restraining arm, but he tightened it about her until it hurt her ribs and interfered with her breathing.

“Tell me about your stepmother.”

“I can’t, Robert.”

“Then I shall. She’s bone selfish about that career of hers and you and your father have encouraged her to wipe her pretty shoes all over both of you! I can understand why Daniel did it, but you, Sarah, why did you allow her to get away with it?”

“I don’t think I allowed anything,” she said slowly. “You believed her and there didn’t seem to be much I could do about it. Daddy said that one day you would find out, and although I didn’t really believe him, I held on to that. There wasn’t anything else I could do!”

“I wasn’t talking about this last incident,” he said. “What about when you first left home? Wasn’t that because you came up against the same kind of thing?”

She nodded unhappily. “I’d hate her for a while, but never for very long. The theatre is the only real thing for her. She’s the most dedicated person I’ve ever met. It’s rather frightening to see someone totally given to anything. I think that was one of the things that hurt most, that she had nothing left over for anyone else, certainly not for me, who wasn’t even her real daughter!”

“Nor for Daniel. She’s a better actress off the stage than on it,” Robert added bitterly. “I believed in her all the way until the night your father died.”

“I know. It was bad luck that Neil didn’t speak to me at the station—”

“Yes, I had some pretty violent thoughts about him last night. In fact my view of myself as a pacific sort of person had to be radically overhauled one way and another. There was a moment earlier when I knew that I couldn’t let you go, no matter what you were. I even considered threatening to take a stick to you if you ever looked at another man again, or told another lie. Your father’s portrait is a poor substitute for the real thing.”

Her laugh rang out, startling them both. “Oh, I’d love to have seen that!” she gurgled. “You’d never bring yourself to lay a hand on any woman! And if you did, you’d be so apologetic about it, I’d probably argue you out of it!”

“That’s all you know!” he said grimly. “I’ve felt violent about you for weeks!”

Her eyes met his and her flesh tingled with what she took to be fear. She tried to laugh. “Behold me in terror!” she joked. But he didn’t laugh with her. He put up a hand and traced the outline of her jaw with his forefinger, slipping it into the neck of her jersey and jerking her towards him. His lips closed on hers and she could feel the violence that was still within him. He was hurting her, but she didn’t care. With a murmured protest, her arms went up behind his neck and she pulled him closer still.

After a few minutes he pushed himself away from her and she was surprised to discover that she was living on the wet grass and that, without his support, she was in danger of falling down the slope into the valley below. She sat up and brushed the dew off her jersey, watching the water as it stained the wool dark. It didn’t matter, she thought, for the sun would soon dry both her and the grass.

Robert lit himself a cigarette. She couldn’t see his face, as he had turned away from her, but she could imagine exactly how he was looking. She plucked a blade of grass and examined it closely, annoyed because her fingers were trembling. Civilisation was a very thin veneer, even in someone like Robert, but who would have suspected that he too would ignite like a bomb and needed time to recover? Certainly she had not.

He turned suddenly and smiled at her. “Convinced?”

“I didn’t know—” she began.

He touched her face again, still smiling. “I know that. It’s never happened to you before, has it?”

She shook her head, not looking at him in case she saw, not him, but a stranger. But he turned her face towards him and he was just the same after all, and his expression was very gentle.

“We shall have to do something about it,’ he said. “Will you marry me, Sarah?”

She was silent for a long moment, then the dam within her broke. She flung her arms round his neck. “Oh, Robert, yes, please! ” she cried out. And the tears came thick and fast, rolling down her cheeks in a new, exquisite agony of feeling.

“Darling Sarah, must you cry like that?”

She thought she would always be grateful to him for his gentleness as he wiped her tears away and chided her tenderly for making him feel a brute.

“I’m sorry. I thought I’d lost you, and then—last night!”

“At least the truth came out.”

“It was worse still after you’d s:one. I thought you’d never come hack ! And Madge said she was going to upset the will and she’d ask you to act for her. She may yet,” she added.

“I don’t think she will,” he comforted her. His mouth tightened. “Madge isn’t likely to want to tangle with me for a long time to come.”

Sarah’s eyes opened wide. “Why not?”

He smiled faintly. “You remember the night I asked her to dinner?”

Sarah nodded. “I was terribly hurt that you didn’t ask me too,” she confessed. “I still think you might have done! You made me very unhappy!”

“Did I?” His eyes glinted and she thought he was going to kiss her again. “I was pretty unhappy myself!”

“Madge was terribly pleased that you asked her,” she murmured.

“Yes, well, I asked Samantha too—”

“I know that!”

He laughed. “Did Madge tell you?”

“No.” She blushed. “She was with you when you brought Madge home. You saw her into the house and then you walked back to the Manor with Samantha. You had your arm round her!”

He did kiss her then. “I hope you were jealous,” he teased her.

“You shouldn’t wish jealousy on to your worst enemy!” she sighed. “I hated both of you!”

“Samantha,” he said dryly, “doesn’t see well in the dark. Unlike you, my darling.”

“I watched you from Madge’s bedroom window.”

His hand tightened on hers, but he made no other comment. “Your stepmother intrigued me. The only other actress I had known intimately was my own stepmother, and she was such an obvious fraud that I could only despise my father for being taken in by her. Yours is different. She has the same driving ambition, more of it in fact, but she had attracted and married a man like Daniel and she had brought you up, so she had to have something else as well. I thought it was that she was honest with herself.” He gave her a quick kiss, silencing her protest. “You and Daniel were very loyal, my darling. Neither of you gave any sign that you weren’t a completely happy family, temporarily at a loss because Madge couldn’t see your father through his illness. Your father mentioned that he wished you’d had a happier home life, but that could have been caused by anything—”