A Dark and Distant Shore (24 page)

‘And if Napoleon isn’t restored?’

‘If Wellington were to defeat him, the Funds would revert to their normal level. They might even go higher, though not at once. And I would find myself back to where I was before the crisis.’

‘Would that satisfy you?’ The words were softly spoken and quite uncritical, but he looked at her sharply.

He said, ‘Of course.’

‘I have no means of knowing what rumour says. Does the City think Napoleon might win?’

‘Yes.’

After a brief silence, ‘Do you remember last year,’ she asked reflectively, ‘when Lord Cochrane and his friends made – how much was it? thousands and thousands of pounds – by spreading a premature rumour that Napoleon had been deposed? The value of their stocks shot up, and they sold at an enormous profit. I had never realized until then how
quickly
great profits or losses could be made. It can’t have been more than a day or two before the news came that he hadn’t been deposed at all.’

Their minds were beautifully attuned. With the purest amusement in his eyes, he said, ‘But Cochrane was a distinguished naval officer and a Knight of the Bath. I can’t think that I, a very minor and quite unbelligerent Honourable, could convince the City single-handed that Boney had been defeated finally and forever!’

She wrinkled her nose, dissatisfied. ‘No, I suppose not. What a pity! It would have been by far the simplest solution. For you really need to make a vast sum of money so that you needn’t be beholden to Charlotte.’ The silence told her what she had said.

‘You know, then?’ His long, capable fingers were tightly intertwined.

‘Only that you have – parted. Something to do with gaming, I believe.’

She wasn’t asking a question, and he could sense that she didn’t think it important, but he felt compelled to answer. ‘In a way. My wife doesn’t enter into my feelings about the importance of my investments, and of course she’s perfectly right. As far as Glenbraddan is concerned, they are of no account at all. It’s just that they matter to me.’

‘Then why take any risk, if they are so important? If you sell now, you will lose – what? – ten or twenty per cent? If you wait, you
might
lose sixty or seventy. If your savings are a kind of lifeline to you...’ She
did
understand. ‘...you have to maintain them. Lose a little, gain a little, the lifeline is still there. But lose a lot, and it’s gone. Or am I wrong?’

His laugh was a travesty. ‘Not wrong. If I were a sane, rational human being you would be perfectly right. But, unfortunately, after I had been speaking to some of Wellington’s more devoted admirers, I had an inspiration. It occurred to me that the intelligent thing to do would be to buy, not sell. The object, as you will readily appreciate, being to unload the new stock when Wellington defeats Bonaparte, and so make a neat and satisfying profit.’

‘That sounds perfectly reasonable to me.’

‘Thank you. The only flaw was that, having no ready cash to buy with, I resorted to gaming with the object of raising some. I was going to buy the stock with my winnings, you understand.’

‘But you lost.’ Her voice was perfectly matter-of-fact.

‘Of course. Almost to the full extent of my holdings at their pre-crisis value. I now owe more than I could possibly recoup by selling at today’s price, and far, far more than I could recoup if Napoleon were to defeat the Duke. On the other hand, if the Duke won, I might still find myself with a few pence change on the transaction. Enough, I should think, to allow me to go on buying my own cravats.’ His face was empty. ‘So, you see, any news from Brussels is of interest to me.’

Her heart ached for him, and yet it all seemed so unimportant. No, she corrected herself, not unimportant. Irrelevant. With something of an effort, she said, ‘All I can tell you is that Wellington and Blücher command an unsatisfactory and inexperienced army consisting of half the nationalities of Europe, but that generals and men alike hate Napoleon bitterly. Victory matters to them more than anything else in the world. It matters to Napoleon, too, of course, but perhaps not so much to his men. The thing to be feared, I am told, is that he still has that unpredictable genius that carried him through for so long.’ She tried to lighten the atmosphere. ‘You might say that the odds are much the same as Aladdin carried in the Gold Cup!’

‘Five-to-two on Wellington?’ A reluctant smile flickered round the corners of his mouth. ‘And I told Mrs Telfer that nothing less than twenty-to-one against would do for me! I can’t tell you what a fool I feel!’

‘I don’t know,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘You gamble with money. Others gamble with people’s feelings or people’s lives. I wouldn’t like to have to sit in judgement.’

‘You are very kind.’ There didn’t seem much else to say; nothing, certainly, that he dared to say. ‘I can’t imagine why I should have bothered you with my troubles in this way.’ It was a lie. He had been trying, against all his instincts, to shift the burden of his desire by making her think him a fool, so that it would be she who broke the deadly, dangerous current of attraction that flowed so strongly between them. Against all his instincts. Desperately, he didn’t want the current to be broken.

There was a silver branch of candles behind her, but the light in the rest of the room was muted, so that he saw her eyes only as twin pools of shadow. She was sitting perfectly calm and relaxed, but it suddenly came to him that she was waiting.

He rose to his feet, almost stumbling in his haste. ‘I must go,’ he said without preliminary. ‘It has been unforgivable of me to trespass on your courtesy for so long. You must be wishing me at Jericho!’

After the space of a heartbeat, she said, with more composure than he, ‘I will see you out.’

Despite its dimensions, it was a very small room when one walked from a chair by the fireside to a door one didn’t want to reach. When one’s mind was seething with the attempt to find some admissible way of saying, ‘I can’t bear you to go. I can’t bear the thought that I might never see you again.’

But as she stretched out her hand to the reeded brass knob, the problem was resolved for her. Briefly, he stood so close behind her that she could feel the warmth of his skin, and then his long-fingered hands came to rest, steady and firm and final, about her waist.

She could have stopped it all, even then. Killed the joy opening like a day-lily in her heart. Closed her eyes to the jewel-bright gate because she feared the long, dark vista beyond. She had only to ignore his hands, and open the door, and walk ahead of him down the narrow staircase with its portraits of Camerons dead and gone, until they came to the front door, its fanlight silhouetted against the faint glow from the street outside. And then goodnight, Mr Randall. And good-bye. And with every step she would have died a little.

They stood motionless for a very long time, and she was aware of nothing in the world but the weight of his hands and her own passionate thankfulness, as if all her life had been a preparation for this moment. Then his lips brushed her hair and he turned her gently towards him, and looked at her with eyes that were wide, grey, and lucent. As his mouth came down on hers, she made a faint, inarticulate sound in her throat, and then her lids closed and darkness swirled around her, swaying and lapping like some fronded current parting to embrace the unresisting dead. Drowning, dissolving, lost, she opened her lips to his, and with an uneven gasp he drew her tight against him so that the whole length of their bodies melted together and she could feel the hard muscles of his thighs against hers.

At last he withdrew from the kiss and raised his head a little, his breathing light and quick. Her face, below his, was calm and smooth, the lips vulnerable, the sweep of dark gold lashes fringing closed eyelids as slanting and mysterious as those of some Romanesque saint. In the candlelight a trace of tears gleamed on her cheeks, and the coils of her hair, loosened by his embrace, fell in a pale cascade against the dark cloth of his sleeve. He touched his lips to the tears, and then stretched out a hand to turn the key.

There was no need for them to speak, no question that needed to be asked or answered, for this was a day that had been written in their stars since they were born. Nothing could change it. Nothing could touch them, neither past nor future, nor any awareness of the present beyond the enchanted circle that enclosed them. As his lips became more demanding and his hands more eloquent, they moved only towards an end that was never in doubt.

He carried her, after a time, to the curtained bed that lay beyond the other door, and set her down softly among the heaped pillows under the tasselled canopy. And there, she who had never before experienced either beauty or pleasure in love – who, in her innocence, had even doubted their existence – there she discovered what it was to be swept into a realm where torture and delight were one, where her whole being strained towards the fulfilment of a desire she did not yet recognize, a fulfilment that was promised and withheld, and promised again, and then with a wild, unimagined thrill, granted to her at last.

An hour, a month, a year later, she opened her eyes to see his face poised over hers, mysterious in the shadows. As if he were finishing a speech long begun, he murmured, ‘Always, and forever.’ He was leaning on one elbow, his free hand resting lightly in the curve of her waist, and, dreaming still, she raised a finger and ran it slowly down the taut skin of his side. With a laugh that was half a groan, he stopped her, and then caressed her lips gently with his and drew away.

She was surprised to discover, as she coiled her hair before the glass, that it was not quite midnight. There was a reproachful kitten sitting on the landing, and she gathered it up and stroked it as she accompanied Mr Randall to the door. ‘I hope,’ she said politely, as she bade him good night, ‘that your stocks recover. I will send to let you know if I should hear further from Brussels.’

‘You are most kind, Mrs Lauriston.’

She watched his tall figure stride away in the direction of Piccadilly, and then turned back into the house. Sorley was just emerging from the service door under the stairs. ‘You may lock up now,’ she said, smiling. ‘And good night, Sorley.’

He watched her mount the stairs again, the purring kitten held against the curve of her shoulder, and his face was alight with happiness for her.

In the days that followed, they couldn’t bear to be apart. Restored to some kind of sanity, Perry would not come to the house again, but they met, sometimes for an hour, once for a whole, idyllic afternoon, in the Green Park, where Vilia had always found refuge since she had come to London as a child. At first, they scarcely spoke. It was as if they were still suspended in a dream of space and time, seeing the real world through a frosted glass. It was enough to be together, and touch hands occasionally, and watch each other’s faces.

But on the Friday, as she stood invisible as a chameleon in her pale green gown against the curtain of a weeping willow, she saw him coming before he was aware of her, and was shocked and alarmed by the strain on his face. It vanished when he saw her, and they clasped hands briefly and then turned to walk along the leafy path, with its scattering of other strollers. ‘What is it?’ she said at last. ‘You looked so ill!’

His eyes clung to hers. ‘Did I? I’m sorry. I don’t know what I would do if you weren’t here to give me strength.’ He turned his head away, and went on, ‘It was just that I heard a rumour that Napoleon joined his army on Tuesday, and I was oppressed by the thought that not only Europe’s fate, but my own, has come a seven-league step nearer.’

She didn’t want to think about it. Brightly, she said, ‘Oh, ye of little faith! Have you no trust in the great, the glorious, the invincible Duke of Wellington?’

‘A general is invincible only until the first time he is defeated. I don’t know, my darling! I don’t know anything any more. But if it hadn’t been for you, I think I would have weakened and sold my stocks by now.’

‘If it hadn’t been for me?’ she repeated, frightened. ‘But
I
haven’t tried to persuade you!’

He stopped and faced her, ignoring the passers-by, and his voice was almost impatient. ‘But don’t you see? I
must
gamble now. If I gamble and win, there might – somehow, some time – be hope for us. But if I lose, the extent of my losses scarcely matters. It will be the end.’

‘Why? Why should it? Your losses can’t be so great?’

‘Can’t they? I need £10,000 to make them good.’

The sum was astronomical. A hundred years’ wages for a French cook, Vilia’s ridiculous, mathematical mind told her helplessly. The kind of sum that, at three per cent, would keep a country family in comfort forever, with the capital still intact. Enough to pay the rent at Half Moon Street for forty years or so. How was it
possible
to lose so much at the gaming table? Her father could probably have told her.

‘You fool,’ she said quietly. ‘You fool.’ But it sounded almost like an endearment.

He turned and began to walk again. ‘At their value earlier this year, I had stocks worth £10,000. During these last weeks I have gambled and lost to much the same tune. My creditors have agreed to wait, but not for long. If I sell at a loss, I will have to dishonour at least £3,000 of those debts, perhaps as much as £6,000 or £7,000 if Wellington is defeated. In neither case will I have any future. In neither case will
we
have any future. Only if I have the courage to hold on, and only if Wellington wins, is there any possibility of my escaping a debtors’ prison. Will you come and visit me in the Fleet?’

She found she resented being tumbled off her rose-tinted cloud. ‘The Fleet? Pooh!’ she said with a brittle laugh. ‘If the worst comes to the worst, you can always take sanctuary in Edinburgh.’

He didn’t understand.

‘Didn’t you know? Ever since the time of King David I there’s been a right of sanctuary at Holyrood. I believe the precise area stretches from the foot of the Canongate to Duddingston Loch, and includes the whole of the King’s Park and Arthur’s Seat. You pay two guineas to the Hereditary Keeper, and then you can stay in the district free from harassment. There are lodgings at a few shillings a week, and on Sundays you may even venture outside the sanctuary bounds. There are supposed to be about a hundred insolvents and levanters living there now, beyond the reach of the law.’ She laughed again. ‘But this information can’t be new to you? I understood that all dedicated gamblers learned it at their mother’s knee.’