Voices in a Haunted Room

“Poor Dolly,” said Sabrina.

“We’ll have to have them, I’m afraid,” said my mother. “I must say I don’t greatly care for Evalina Trent.”

“She’s a great pusher,” Dickon put in. “Always has been since she was a young girl.”

“She’s been around for a long time, hasn’t she, Dickon?” said Sabrina.

“Yes, she came to Grasslands when her mother was housekeeper here.” He laughed suddenly, as though he was remembering something amusing.

“She seems to think a great deal of that pretty grand-daughter of hers,” said my mother. “That’s natural, but rather a responsibility for her since they have no parents.

I suppose they’ll have to come. Thank Heaven, they don’t have to stay in the house.

I wonder when Enderby will be ready. Well into the new year, I suppose.”

“When do you hope to move?” asked Sabrina of Sophie.

“As soon as I can.” Sophie gave a nervous little laugh. “Oh, that seems ungrateful.

You have all been so helpful. But I want to be in my own house, you understand.”

“Of course we understand,” said my mother, “and we are only too pleased that it has all worked out so satisfactorily.”

Satisfactorily? I thought. I wondered what she would say if she knew what had happened between Jonathan and me.

So the plans for Christmas went on.

I saw Jonathan alone in the gardens. He said to me: “I must see you again, Claudine ... alone. I can’t go on like this.”

I begged: “Please don’t. I’m beginning to forget ...”

“You can never forget. It was too wonderful to be forgotten. Claudine, we must...”

“No, no,” I said.

“Admit then that you love me.”

“I don’t know. I don’t understand myself, you, or anything anymore.”

“But it was wonderful for you.”

I was silent.

“You were tempted, weren’t you? You could not resist. Do you think I didn’t know!

You’re so marvelous. No one else will do for me, and it must be the same with you.”

“It can’t be. David is my husband.”

“And I am your lover.”

“It is an impossible situation.”

“How can it be when it exists?”

“It must not exist. It is finished ... Finished, I tell you.”

“It will never finish, Claudine, while you are you and I am myself.”

“Please, don’t ...”

“Admit it then. Admit that you love me. Admit that it was wonderful ... more wonderful than you have ever believed anything could be.”

I heard myself shouting: “All right. It was. It was....”

Then I ran into the house.

Once I had made that admission, I knew there would be no holding back. He would seek every opportunity and when it came, snatch at it. And I knew that I should be there.

I could not fight this. I was learning something of my own nature which I had not known until Jonathan aroused it. I was not the woman to be content with a quiet tender passion. I wanted to soar the heights, not just dally in the pleasant lowlands. He was right when he said I wanted both him and David. I did. I loved David. I found the way hi which he seemed so delighted and almost surprised that I loved him, most endearing. I loved to read and discuss with him. I was interested in matters of the mind, but there was another side to my nature too. I was a voluptuous and sensuous woman. I had needs which demanded satisfaction; and as with such physical desires, when they presented themselves, they could subdue everything else.

Jonathan knew me better than I knew myself. He had probed that hidden part of me.

It was that which appealed to him. He wanted the sort of woman I was. My position in the household had made me the most desirable wife he could have. It had never occurred to him that in such a short time after his disappearance, I could have married David.

His journey to France had not been one of those on-the-spur-of-the-moment decisions we had been led to believe it was. He was involved with his father’s secret life, and Dickon, in the past, had made many journeys to France. Men doing such work contrived to have an obvious reason for their voyages, the better to help disguise the real one. Jonathan had gone to France not only to rescue Sophie but to gather certain information-of that I was sure now. He had seized the opportunity to go with Chariot and had intended to return when his mission was accomplished ... and then he planned to marry me.

But I had ruined his plans by my hasty marriage to David. Looking back, I wondered why I had slipped into that so easily. It might have been because I was piqued by Jonathan’s departure. Always it was Jonathan who was in my thoughts. Had I been older, wiser, I should have guessed; but because I was innocent, life seemed simple to me.

I had imagined that when I married David that would be the end of all conflict and we should live happily ever after.

Now I was being revealed to myself and I saw a woman who would risk a great deal to be with her lover. My marriage vows, everything I had been brought up to believe was right, my guilty conscience ... all could be pushed to one side when I was confronted by the overpowering need to make love with this one man.