‘Lottie,’ he said, ‘it was always you. Never anyone else. Nor was it for you. You never forgot me any more than I forgot you. We’re together at last. Let’s take what we’ve got. Lottie … please.’
He held me fast now and I felt myself slipping away in some sort of ecstasy. I was a child again. Dickon was my lover. This was how it was always meant to be.
I was not fighting any more. I heard him laugh triumphantly.
‘No,’ I said. ‘No.’ But I did not make any other protest and Dickon would know that surrender was close.
But … just then, I heard a movement, the sound of a footstep overhead—and I was immediately brought back to sanity.
I said: ‘Someone is here … in the house.’
‘No,’ said Dickon.
‘Listen.’
There it was again. The definite sound of a footstep.
‘Come on. We’ll see who it is,’ said Dickon. He started out of the gallery and up the staircase. I followed.
We were in a corridor. There were many doors there. Dickon threw open one of them. I followed him into a room. There was no one there. We went into another room. There were a few pieces of furniture in this one and it took us a little time to make sure there was no one hiding there. And as he pulled back the tattered brocade curtains about a four-poster bed we heard the movement again. This time it was downstairs. There
We rushed down. Soon we were through the window and out among the overgrown shrubs. I felt overwhelmingly grateful to whoever it was who had saved me from Dickon and myself.
We rode silently back to the house. Dickon was clearly disappointed but not utterly dismayed. I realized he had high hopes for the future. I felt a certain elation. Never again, I promised myself.
Something in the house had saved me. It had sounded like human footsteps, but I wondered whether it was some ghost from the past. There was that ancestress of mine, Carlotta. She had had connections with the house at some time; she had actually owned it.
I had almost convinced myself that it was Carlotta returned from the dead who had saved me, and this was an indication of the state of mind into which I was falling. I had always regarded myself as a practical woman. The French are notoriously practical; and I was half French. And yet sometimes I felt as though since I had come to England I was being drawn into a web from which I would eventually be unable to escape.
It was an absurd feeling, but I had to admit that it was there.
The sensation came to me that I was being watched. When I returned to the house, if I glanced up to what I knew to be Griselda’s windows there would be a hasty movement. Someone was there looking down on me and dodging back hoping not be seen. I could put that down to an old woman’s curiosity and according to Sabrina she was a little mad in any case; but it was more than that. Sometimes I felt I was watched from the banisters, from the corridors, and sometimes I hurried to the spot where I thought I had seen or heard a movement and there was nothing there. An old woman could certainly not have been agile enough to get out of Enderby and climb through the window.
My grandmother’s health had improved since we had come and my mother said it was time we thought of going home. Sabrina and my grandmother were sad at the prospect.
‘It has been so wonderful to see you,’ said Sabrina. ‘It has meant so much to us all. It has kept Dickon with us. It is a long time since he has been at Eversleigh for such a stretch.’
I said that our husbands would be wondering why we did not return and my mother added that they had only agreed that we should come because the visit was to be a short one.
I was determined to see Griselda before I left, and one afternoon I made my way to that part of the house where I knew her rooms to be.
It was very quiet and lonely as I ascended the short narrow staircase and came to a corridor. I had judged it from where I knew the window to be from the shadowy watcher who had looked down on me.
I found a door and knocked. There was no answer, so I went to the next and knocked again.
There was still no answer but I sensed that someone was on the other side of the door.
‘Please may I come in?’ I said.
The door opened suddenly. An old woman was standing there. The grey hair escaped from under a cap; her face was pale and her deep-set eyes wide with the whites visible all round the pupil which gave her an expression of staring. She was dressed in a gown of sprigged muslin, high-necked and tight-bodiced. She was very slight and thin.
‘Are you Griselda?’ I asked.
‘What do you want?’ she demanded.
‘I wanted to meet you. I am going soon, and I did want to make the acquaintance of everyone in the house before I do.’
‘I know who you are,’ she said, as though the knowledge gave her little pleasure.
‘I am Madame de Tourville. I lived here once.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘before my lady came here. You were here then.’
