When they reentered the house the tall clock in the hall was striking midnight. Maisie suddenly felt drained by the tensions of the day. "I'm going to bed," she announced.
She saw the duchess look reflexively at Hugh, then back at her, and suppress a little smile; and she realized that they all thought Hugh would sleep with her tonight.
The ladies went upstairs together, leaving the men to play billiards and drink a nightcap. As the women kissed her good night Maisie saw the same look in the eyes of each one, a gleam of excitement tinged with envy.
She went into her bedroom and closed the door. A coal fire burned merrily in the grate, and there were candles on the mantelpiece and the dressing table. On the bedside table, as usual, there was a plate of sandwiches and a bottle of sherry in case she got peckish in the night: she never touched them, but the well-trained staff of Kingsbridge Manor put a tray beside every bed without fail.
She began to take off her clothes. They might all be wrong: perhaps Hugh would not come to her tonight. The thought stabbed her like a pain, and she longed for him to come through the door so that she could take him in her arms and kiss him, really kiss him, not guiltily as she had in the garden, but hungrily and shamelessly. The feeling brought back an overwhelming memory of the night of the Goodwood races six years ago, the narrow bed in his aunt's house, and the expression on his face when she took off her dress.
She looked at her body in the long mirror. Hugh would notice how it had changed. Six years ago she had had tiny turned-in pink nipples like dimples, but now, after nursing Bertie, they were enlarged and strawberry-colored, and stuck out. As a girl she had not needed to wear a corset--she had been naturally wasp-shaped--but her waist had never quite returned to normal after pregnancy.
She heard the men coming up the stairs, heavy-footed and laughing at some joke. Hugh had been right: not one of them would be shocked by a little adultery at a country-house party. Did they not feel disloyal to their friend Solly, she thought derisively? And then it hit her like a slap in the face that she was the one who ought to feel disloyal.
