The Morning Gift

She didn’t, at first, take in what she saw: a necklace of green stones, each ringed by diamonds and linked by a golden chain. Emeralds, green as the sea, as the eyes of the Buddha and perfectly matched.

Then suddenly she understood.

This was a gift . . . a gift hurried to her through the London streets so that it should reach her the morning after the bridal night. Obscenely valuable, because Quin was generous and would not buy her off with anything cheap, but unmistakable in what it signified.

‘The word comes from the Latin matrimonium ad morganaticum,’ Quin had told her in the Stadtpark, explaining the concept of a morganatic marriage. ‘It’s a marriage based on the morning gift with which the husband frees himself from any liability to his wife. A morganatic wife doesn’t share any of her husband’s duties or responsibilities, and their children don’t inherit.’

That was why he had urged her to stay home this morning; so that she would be certain to receive it. So that she should understand at once that she was not wanted at Bowmont. A girl with tainted blood might be fit to share his bed, but not his home. A refugee, a foreigner, part Jewish . . . of course, it was unthinkable. If it could happen to Dr Levy, that saintly man, then why not to her?

She shut the box, hid it in the pocket of her dressing-gown. How physical it was, this kind of pain, like being terribly ill. Why couldn’t one stop the shivering, the giddiness? And if one couldn’t, why didn’t the next part follow – the part that would have made it right again? Just dying? Just being dead?

‘Look at this!’ said Lady Plackett. ‘It’s outrageous! Professor Somerville must be informed immediately and take the necessary steps!’

Unaware of Verena’s expectations over Africa, she was no longer so pleased with Quinton who seemed to be doing nothing to further his involvement with her daughter.

Verena, taking the newspaper from her mother’s hands, entirely agreed. She had not been able to find anything to pin against Ruth, but there were things that still niggled on the edge of her mind. Why had Ruth been carried to the tower at Bowmont where no one else was allowed to go? What was the Austrian girl’s connection with Quin before she came?

‘The impression is one of lewdness,’ she remarked in her precise voice, and felt a glow of satisfaction, for if the Professor still harboured protective feelings for the foreigner, this photograph would surely banish them.

‘I shall ring his secretary now,’ said Lady Plackett.

Thus Quin, on the way back from the museum where he had arranged Ruth’s passage, and still treading on air, found a message from Lady Plackett and made his way to the Lodge.

‘We feel that you would wish to be informed of how one of your students conducts herself in her spare time,’ said Lady Plackett, and opened the newspaper.

Quin did not consider how the Daily Echo had got through the august portals of the Vice Chancellor’s Lodge. He did not stop to consider anything because the picture – a half-spread on the centre page – hit him a blow for which he was entirely unprepared.

It was of Ruth and Heini side by side and very close together. They were not entwined, not lolling on a sofa – not at all. Heini sat by a grand piano and Ruth was leaning across, one arm in a curve behind his curly head and her face, as she followed the instructions of the photographer, turned directly to the camera. Her wide mouth, her sweet smile, thus stared out of the page, trusting and happy and Heini, gazing up at her adoringly, was brushed by a straying tendril of her hair.

The caption said – of course it said – Heini and his Starling.

‘I’m sure you will agree that this kind of exposure in the gutter press is quite unacceptable,’ said Lady Plackett.

‘And that isn’t all,’ said Verena. ‘She has endeavoured to bring the university down with her. Thameside is specifically mentioned. She is referred to as one of its most brilliant students.’

Quin was silent, bewildered by the effect the picture had on him. He would have found it less painful to have seen her photographed with Heini in bed. People went to bed for all sorts of reasons, but the homage and devotion with which she bent to the boy was devastating.

‘She seems to have been the victim of a somewhat unscrupulous journalist,’ he said.