Will You Love Me in September

It was midday when he came again. This time he brought me hot soup and a chicken leg. It tasted like ambrosia.

"You enjoy your food," he said.

"Have you ever heard that hunger seasons all dishes?”

"Not an original remark, I believe," he said.

"That does not detract from its truth. However, thank you for my excellent meal.”

He smiled and repeated that they were not savages.

"Is that so?" I said. "Thank you for the information. I might not have known . .

. had I not been told.”

"You are very foolish," he told me. "You should be trying to ingratiate yourself with me.”

He was right, of course. My mocking manner was making things worse for me.

"I see," I said. "Good, kind sir, I thank you for the benefits you have bestowed on me. To feed one in my position is gracious of you. I bow before your magnanimity.”

"That," he said severely, "is worse than ever.”

I began to laugh, and to my amazement he was laughing with me.

I thought, He is enjoying this too. Of course he is. He has a position of responsibility, but I think he rather likes me.

From that moment our relationship began to change. At moments I thought we were like two children playing a game in which I was taking the part of the kidnapped girl, he her guard.

He sat in the chair and looked at me. "Tell me about yourself," he said.

I began to tell him how I had visited my uncle Hessenfield and had come north from my home in the south, but he interrupted: "Not that. I know all that. I have heard them talk about how you came to York with your uncle, General Eversleigh, and on to Hessenfield. They thought it was a good opportunity for you to do a little spying for them and ...”

"You are wrong about the spying, but the rest is right.”

I told my story. It seemed very romantic. My beautiful mother ... my incomparable father, the great Hessenfield.

" 'The great Hessenfield,' " he repeated, his eyes shining. "He has always been a hero to us. I was always taught that I must grow up like him.”

"He was wonderful. I used to ride on his shoulders.”

"You rode on great Hessenfield's shoulders?”

"I was his daughter.”

"And you could bring yourself to spy for the other side!”

"I keep telling you I did not spy.”

"You really came up here to work for us.”

"I did not. I did not. I want none of your wars. I want old George to stay where he is and for everyone to stop shouting about it.”

"Can this be Hessenfield's daughter?”

"The very same.”

I told him how my parents had died and I had been taken by a faithful maid and how Aunt Damaris had come to Paris to find me.

"Yes," he said, surveying me with admiration. "I can imagine all that happening to you.”

Then he told me about himself. It seemed very mild compared with my adventures. His father had died at the Battle of Blenheim when he was about five years old.

"Not for the Jacobites?" I asked.

"No. My father was not one. But I was sent to my uncle soon after, when my mother died, and I learned all about the cause, so I became a Jacobite-and you can mock all you like, but I tell you King James is coming back to rule over us.”

"You should never be too sure of what is going to happen. You may be wrong, you know.”

"Soon my uncle will be coming back from Preston with good news.”

"And then what will happen to me?”

"So much will depend on what it is necessary to do.”

I shivered. "At least they are not here yet," I said.

We talked of other things, including horses and dogs. I told him about Damon and he said he had a mastiff. He would show me-Then he stopped. "But you are a prisoner,”

he said.

"You could let me free-just to see the dogs.”

"What if you ran away?”

"You could catch me and bring me back.”

"You are mocking again.”

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to.”

And so the day passed, not unpleasantly, and when it was dark he came up with a fur rug and two candles for me.

Even now it is difficult for me to know what exactly happened to me during those days I spent in the attic. They seemed, even looking back, to have been touched with a mystic light. He came to me every morning with my oatmeal, and he would stay during the morning, then go away and return with my midday meal. Before the second day was over we no longer pretended to be antagonistic toward one another. I did not disguise the fact that I greeted him with joy any more than he could pretend he did not want to be with me.

He was called Richard Frenshaw, and, he told me, those who were intimate with him called him Dickon. I called him Dickon. I thought it suited him. Clarissa suited me, he told me. We used to look at each other in silence sometimes. I thought he was the most beautiful human being I had ever seen-with a different sort of beauty from that of my parents. I suppose it was what is called falling in love, but neither of us realized it at first, perhaps because it had never happened to either of us before.

We argued incessantly. He put the case for the Jacobites with fervor. I laughed at him and shocked him by telling him I simply did not care which King was on the throne.