Eva Ibbotson

“I’m extremely grateful to you, Henry,” said Rom, getting to his feet. “Indeed, I am utterly in your debt. And I don’t think it’s necessary for us to mention our conversation to your mother. Gentlemen often have private conversations of this sort among themselves. I’m leaving very early in the morning, but we shall meet in England and have some splendid times.” And shaking Henry’s hands with gratifying formality, he strode away.

Left alone, Henry made his way back to the manatees. The carving on the mantelpiece had been quite right, he reflected. Truth did deliver you. He felt much better. He felt, in fact, absolutely fine!

Half an hour before Mr. Fortescue was due from London, Aunt Louisa went upstairs to Harriet’s room to put a clean towel on the washstand and to change Harriet’s nightdress for a high-necked one of bleached calico. It was her own, but she did not grudge it to the errant girl, for the few but shamefully luxurious things which Harriet had brought from Manaus had all, of course, been confiscated and sold.

“Goodness, she has got thin!” said Mrs. Belper, who had come to be with Louisa on this important day. Just returned from a week’s visit to her sister, she was startled by the change in Harriet.

“She is thin because she doesn’t eat!” snapped Louisa. “I hope you don’t think that we are starving her.”

Mr. Fortescue was due at two-thirty and in deference to the occasion Louisa had ordered coffee and even a plate of digestive biscuits to be sent to the drawing room.

“I wish Bernard could be here,” she said. “But he never will miss giving a lecture.”

“Perhaps it is as well, Louisa; it might be a little painful. After all, if the diagnosis is what we expect, it will virtually be a statement that his daughter is—”

A shrill peal of the doorbell brought both ladies to their feet and out into the hall.

Mr. Fortescue was as well-dressed as they expected and the gleaming Rolls-Royce in which his chauffeur waited was evidence that his Harley Street specialist was in the top rank, but he was surprisingly young.

“I have come to see Harriet Morton,” he announced, handing his hat and gloves to the maid.

“Yes, indeed. We were expecting you,” said Louisa, all affability. “It is good of you to come all the way from London. We have naturally been very much concerned—my poor brother has been distracted—but we really feel that an institution of some kind is the only answer. Though of course it is for you to say after you have examined her.”

Mr. Fortescue did not appear to be a man of many words.

“Perhaps you will take me to her?” was all he said and Louisa, explaining the sad circumstances, her niece’s inexplicable depravity and the course which on the advice of Dr. Smithson they had been compelled to take, led him to the top of the stairs, where she took a key from the bunch at Tier belt.

“You keep her locked in?”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Fortescue. Yes indeed! We would not be willing to take the responsibility of leaving a girl of that sort unguarded.”

She inserted the key in the lock—only to find that the specialist’s lean brown hand had closed firmly over hers.

“Give me the key if you please. And be kind enough to wait for me downstairs. I always examine patients of this kind alone.”

“But surely that is not customary?” Louisa was distinctly flustered. “Surely another person is always present when—”

“Are you telling me how to do my job, Miss Morton?” The voice was silkily polite but the glint in his eyes sent Louisa scuttling back downstairs.

He waited until she was out of sight and then turned the key.

The room was bare, cold, scrupulously clean. In the narrow bed Harriet lay on her back and did not turn her head.

Rom walked over to her.

He had imagined this meeting a thousand times: the happiness, the love that would flow between them, the joy with which they would laugh away their misunderstanding. Now there was none of that. A red mist covered his eyes; rage savaged him: he thirsted to kill—to take hold of the woman he had just seen and beat her head against the wall—to press his fingers slowly, voluptuously into the jugular vein of the man who had done this to Harriet.

Harriet opened her eyes. For a moment she stared unfocused at the figure bent over her. Then over the face of this girl he had believed to value her career above his love there spread a look that he was never to forget as long as he lived.

Next came a desolate whimper of pain, a fractional movement of the head.

“No,” said Rom quietly, “you’re not dreaming. I’m here, Harriet! In the flesh—very much in the flesh.” Aware that she was on the edge of the abyss, that he must call her back very gently, he laid only the lightest of hands on her hair. “You’ve led me the devil of a dance! I went to St. Petersburg first! Simonova’s in fine fettle, I may say.”

She could not speak yet. Only her eyes begged for the power to trust in this miracle.

“I must say that I find that a perfectly detestable nightdress,” said Rom cheerfully. “Your Aunt Louisa can certainly pick them!”