AT FIRST AMBER was perfectly content to meet Bruce in secret. Having come so close to losing him she was grateful for the furtive hours, determined to savour to the full each moment they had together. For now she realized that he never would come back again and she saw the time running out—days, then weeks, then months, and her life seemed to be going with it.
But slowly a resentment began to grow. When he had said it she had believed implicitly that he really meant he would see her no more if Corinna found out. And yet he had broken one promise to his wife—why not others? And never, in the ten years she had known him, had he seemed so genuinely and deeply in love with her. It did not occur to her that she might be responsible for that herself—for she had never made so few demands, or been so unfailingly cheerful, without arguments or complaint. And so gradually she persuaded herself that she was of such great importance to him that no matter what happened he would never give her up. Consequently, she grew more dissatisfied with her lot.
What am I to him? she would ask herself sourly. Something between a whore and a wife—a kind of fish with feathers. I’ll be damned if he can continue to use me at this rate! I’ll let him know I’m no farmer’s niece now! I’m the Duchess of Ravenspur, a great lady, a person of quality—I
But the first time she hinted her indignation, his answer was definite. “This arrangement was your idea, Amber, not mine. If it no longer suits you—say so, and we’ll stop meeting.” The look in his eyes frightened her into silence—for a while.
Still she thought that there would always be a way to get what she wanted, and she grew more rebellious and defiant. By the middle of May her patience, which had been dragging thin these past five months, was worn through. As she went to meet him one day, bouncing and jogging along in a hackney, she had reached a peak of reckless and unreasonable irritability. Corinna was expecting her child In another month and so they could have no more than six or seven weeks at the longest left in England. She knew well enough that she had no business poking the hornet’s nest now.
But who ever heard of treating a mistress so scurvily! she asked herself. Why should I have to sneak about to meet him like a common pick-purse? Oh, a pox on him and his infernal secrecy!
She was dressed like a country-girl, perhaps come in from Knightsbridge or Islington or Chelsea to sell vegetables, and out of sentiment she had chosen a costume very much like the one she had been wearing the day of the Heathstone May Fair. It consisted of a green wool skirt pinned up over a short red-and-white-striped cotton petticoat, a black stomacher laced tight across her ribs, and a full-sleeved white blouse. Her legs were bare, she wore neat black shoes and a straw bongrace tilted far back on her head. With her hair falling loose and no paint on her face she looked surprisingly as she had ten years ago.
The day was warm for the sun had come out suddenly after a morning of early summer rain, and she had lowered the glass window. Rattling along King Street she came to Charing Cross where the Strand met Pall Mall, and as the coach drew to a stop she stuck out her head to look for him. The open space was filled with children and animals, beggars and vendors and citizens; it was busy, noisy, and—as London would always be to her—exciting.
She saw him immediately, standing several feet away with his back turned, buying a little basket of the first red cherries from an old fruit-woman, while a dirty little urchin pulled at his coat, begging a penny. Bruce had not taken to disguises with the same gusto she had but always wore his own well-cut unostentatious suits. This one had green breeches, gartered at the knee, and a handsome knee-length black coat with very broad gold-embroidered cuffs set on sleeves that came just below the elbow. His hat was three-cornered and both suit and hat were in the newest fashion.
Her face lost its petulant frown at the sight of him, and she leant forward, waving her arm and crying: “Hey, there!”
Half-a-dozen men looked around, grinning, to ask if she called them. She made them an impudent teasing grimace. Bruce turned, paid the old cherry-woman, tossed a coin to the little beggar, and after giving the driver his directions got into the coach. He handed her the basket of cherries and, as the hackney gave a lurch and started off, sat down suddenly. With quick admiration his eyes went over her, from her head down to her fragile ankles, demurely crossed.
“You make as pretty a country-wench as the first day I saw you.”
“Do I so?” Amber basked under his smile, beginning to eat the cherries and giving a fistful to him. “It’s been ten years, Bruce—since that day in Marygreen. I can’t believe it, can you?”
“I should think it would seem like many more than ten years to you.”
