“You know,” said Philip finally, and now he looked directly at her, “it doesn’t seem as though you’re my step-mother. I can’t make myself believe it—no matter how I try. I wonder why?” He seemed genuinely puzzled and distressed; almost comically so, Amber thought.
“Perhaps,” she suggested lazily, “you don’t want to.”
She had begun to make the flowers into a wreath for her hair, piercing the tiny stems with one sharp fingernail, threading them dexterously together.
He thought that over in silence. Then: “How did you ever happen to marry Father?” he blurted suddenly.
Amber kept her eyes down, apparently intent on her work. She gave a little shrug. “He wanted my money. I wanted his title.” When she looked up she saw a worried frown on his face. “What’s the trouble, Philip? Aren’t all marriages a bargain—I have this, you have that, so we get married. That’s why you married Jenny, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yes, of course. But Father’s a mighty fine man—you know that.” He seemed to be trying to convince himself more than her, and he looked at her tensely.
“Oh, mighty fine,” agreed Amber sarcastically.
“He’s mighty fond of you, too.”
She gave a burst of impolite laughter at that. “What the devil makes you think so?”
“He told me.”
“Did he also tell you to keep away from me?”
“No. But I should—I know I should. I should never have come today.” His last words came out swiftly and he turned his head away. Suddenly he started to get to his feet. Amber reached out and caught at his wrist, drawing him gently toward her.
“
He stared down at her, half kneeling, his breath coming hard. “Because I—Because I should! I’d better go back now before I—”
“Before you what?” The sun through the leaves made a spatter of light and dark on her face and throat. Her lips were moist and parted and her teeth shone white between them; her speckled amber eyes held his insistently. “Philip, what are you afraid of? You want to kiss me—why don’t you?”
PHILIP MORTIMER’S CONSCIENCE troubled him. At first he tried to avoid his step-mother. The day after she had seduced him he went to visit a neighbour and remained away for almost a week. When he returned he was so busy visiting tenants that he seldom appeared even for meals, and on those occasions when he could not avoid meeting her his manner was exaggeratedly stiff and formal. Amber was angry, for she thought that his ridiculous behaviour would give them both away. Furthermore, he was the one source of amusement she had found in the country, and she had no intention of losing him.
One day from the windows of her bedchamber she saw him walking alone across the terrace from the gardens. Radclyffe was closeted in his laboratory and had been for some time; so Amber picked up her skirts and rushed out of the room, down the stairs, and onto the brick terrace. There he was below. But as she started after him he glanced hastily around and then dodged into a tall maze of clipped hedges—it had been planned seventy years ago when such labyrinths were the fashion and now had grown so tall that it was almost possible to get lost there. She reached it, looked about but could not see him, and then ran in, turning swiftly into one lane after another, coming up against a blank wall and retracing her steps to start down another path.
“Philip!” she cried angrily. “Philip, where are you!”
But he made no answer. And then all at once she turned into a lane and found him there, caught, for it was closed at the end. He glanced uneasily about him, saw that there was no escape, and faced her with a look of guilty nervousness. Amber burst into laughter and threw over her head the black-lace shawl she had been carrying.
“Oh, Philip! You silly boy! What d’you mean, running away from me like that? Lord, you’d think I was a monster!”
“I wasn’t,” he protested, “I wasn’t running away. I didn’t know you were there.”
She made a face at him. “That wheedle won’t pass. You’ve been running away from me for two weeks now. Ever since—” But he looked at her with such protesting horror that she stopped, widening her eyes and raising her brows. “Well—” she breathed softly then. “What’s the matter? Didn’t you enjoy yourself? You seemed to—at the time.”
Philip was in agony. “Oh, please, your Ladyship! Don’t—I can’t stand it! I’m going out of my head. If you talk that way I’ll—I don’t know what I’ll do!”
Amber put her hands on her hips and one foot began to tap impatiently. “Good Lord, Philip! What’s the matter with you? You act as if you’ve committed some crime!”
His eyes raised again. “I have.”
“What, for heaven’s sake!”
“You know what.”
“I protest—I don’t. Adultery’s no crime—it’s an amusement.” She was thinking that he was a fine example of the folly of allowing a young man to live so long in the country, shut away from polite manners.
