Voices in a Haunted Room

His attitude was changing and I sensed a certain impatience. Sometimes he kissed me and held me against him, and there was something very meaningful in his manner towards me. I knew, in a way, what that meant. He wanted to make love with me.

I might have had a romantic feeling towards him. I could not pretend to myself that he did not arouse new emotions in me such as I wanted to explore; but I did know that he had dallied with some of the serving girls. I had seen them look at him and I had watched his answering response. I had heard it whispered that he had a mistress in London and that he visited her when he was there-which was frequently.

All this I would have expected of Dickon’s son, and if I had felt indifferent towards him it would not have bothered me; but I thought about it a good deal. Sometimes when he helped me down from my horse, which he did whenever he could, although I was quite capable of dismounting on my own, he would hold me closely and laugh up at me, and although I quickly wriggled free I was rather alarmed to discover that I did not really want to. I had an inclination to smile at him invitingly and let him proceed with what he was planning to do because I knew how much I wanted to experience it.

At Eversleigh there were portraits of our family-men and women and I often studied them. The men were of two kinds-I mean of course in one respect only, for their characters were quite diverse and they could not be neatly divided; what I mean is that there were those who were physically demanding and others who were not. I could pick them out by a certain expression in their faces-the sensuous and the austere. There was one ancestress-her name was Carlotta-who embodied all the former; I believe she had had a colourful life with a leader of the Jacobite faction; and there was her half sister Damaris, mother of Sabrina, who was hi the second category. My mother was a woman who understood passion and needed it in her life. Jonathan made me feel that I was the same.

So there were many times when I felt weak and ready to respond to his invitation.

It was only because of who I was that he did not hustle me into a physical relationship.

He could not treat his new stepmother’s daughter as he would some friend in London or any of the servants in our or other households. Even he would not dare to do that.

My mother would have been furious and she would have made sure that Dickon was too; and Jonathan, bold as he was, would not wish to incur his father’s wrath.

Right up to the time of my seventeenth birthday we played our tantalising game. I used to dream about Jonathan-that he came to my room and into my bed. I even locked my door when the dream became too vivid. I always took great care never to meet his eyes when he practised little familiarities, the meaning of which I was fully aware.

When he went to London I used to imagine his visits to his mistress, and I would feel angry and frustrated and jealous, until David soothed me with his interesting discoveries of the past. Then I could forget Jonathan in just the same way as I forgot David when I was with his intriguing brother.

It is all very well to play these games when one is growing up to sixteen, but when one has reached the mature age of seventeen-which is a time when many girls are considered to be ready for marriage-it is a different matter.

I became aware that my mother-and I suppose Dickon, too-would like me to marry either David or Jonathan. I was sure that my mother would prefer David because he was quiet and serious and his fidelity could be relied on. Dickon regarded David as a “dull dog,” and I imagine he thought that a lively girl such as I was, would have a more exciting tune with Jonathan. However, he would certainly give his blessing to either match-and so would my mother.

It would keep me with them, and my mother-to whom the only fly in her marriage ointment was that fertility was lacking-would have grandchildren under her roof.

“In a few weeks you will be seventeen,” said my mother, eyeing me with a sort of wonder, as though for a girl to reach that age was a feat of extreme cleverness.

“I can’t believe it. Seventeen years ago . .” Her eyes clouded as they always did when she thought of those years in France. She did often, I knew. It was impossible not to. We were always hearing of the terrible things which were happening over there, how the King and Queen were now the prisoners of the new regime, and of the terrible humiliations to which they were submitted. Then there was the bloodshed-the guillotine with its horrible basket into which the severed heads of aristocrats dropped with appalling regularity.