Will You Love Me in September

After he had gone I realized how angry I was, how hurt, how humiliated. Why should I be? I asked myself. What he does is no concern of mine. Let him have a houseful of mistresses if he wants them.

He continued to visit the family. When he saw me he behaved as though nothing had happened. I kept wondering about him and visualizing Elvira Vernon in his bedroom.

I was not entirely sure what lovemaking entailed, and I began to develop a great curiosity about this. Occasionally I saw Elvira Vernon. She was poised and sophisticated.

Quite old, I thought a little maliciously.

I became jealous if Lance did not pay enough attention to me. I could not understand myself. I was thinking more often of him than I did of Dickon. He seemed half-amused by what had happened and not in the least ashamed.

Once he said to me, "I'm not a saint. I'm not even a monk. Elvira and I are good for each other ... at the moment.”

"I suppose," I retorted, "one could say that mistresses are as much a part of your life as gambling.”

"I suppose one could," he replied. "What a dissolute character that makes of me.

But lovable withal, eh, Clarissa?”

Then he put his arms round me and held me tightly, and suddenly he kissed me.

I drew away breathless, assuming an anger which I did not feel. The fact was that I was tingling with excitement.

After that I began to realize that life was rather dull when he was not around. I thought a great deal about us. Lance, with his mistresses and his gambling, would be far from the perfect husband. And what sort of wife would I be to him-in love with someone else who was lost to me?

I talked a great deal about Dickon to Lance, stressing his innocence, his gallantry, his purity.

"And sent overseas for years and years," said Lance. "Few ever return. Are you going to spend your life in single blessedness waiting for something which may never happen?

People change with the years. Your Dickon, even if he came back, would not be this pure and gallant boy who went away. And what are those years going to do to you, my sweet Clarissa? Take what is offered you now. Think what we can do for each other.

You can lure me from my vices; I can make you forget an impossible dream.”

I thought a great deal about what he had said. Our relationship was changing. He would embrace me when we met, kiss me in a strangely stirring manner. Sometimes I thought he was laughing at me because I was so innocent of life that I thought it was so dreadful for a man to have a mistress.

"If," I said, "I should agree to marry you, you would have to say goodbye to your mistress of the moment.”

"Done," he said.

"You would have to be a faithful husband.”

"I promise.”

Then he picked me up and held me tightly, and when Damaris came into the room he said, "It's happened at last. Clarissa has promised to marry me.”

I told myself I must stop thinking of Dickon. That encounter with him was one little incident in my life. Lance was here, my future husband, kind, worldly, tender, taking life as it came along, enjoying it, never allowing it to oppress him. That was how I wanted to live. He was a gambler. He gambled with life. He took chances, and if he lost he shrugged his shoulders and was sure he would win next time.

He had been an only child. His father had died when he was a and his mother had lived only a few years longer. He had inherited estates on the border of Kent and Sussex, and if he was not exactly wealthy, he would have been if he had not lived so extravagantly and not lost so much at the gaming tables. My family, Of course? Was naturally interested in his financial position - I know now that my grandmother Priscilla had an obsession about my being married for my money, for I was a considerable heiress.

My mother had been left a fortune, and as I was her nearest of kin, that came to me. It had been looked after by Leigh, who had a head for such matters, and had accumulated during my mother's absence in France and my coming of age. The money was to be mine on my eighteenth birthday or when I married.

There was also my inheritance from my father, which Lord Hessenfield, who had charge of these affairs, had decided should be divided equally between myself and Aimee.

He had made the provision that the money should not pass to either of us until my eighteenth birthday-which was strange, because Aimee was a few years older than I.I wondered why he had arranged this, for he had accepted Aimee, and yet she must wait for her share. If either of us died, her share was to go to the other living sister.

However, I did not think very much about the money. My family was sure it had not influenced Lance's desire to marry me. He was sufficiently comfortably off without it.

Now here I was, not only on the threshold of marriage but about to become a rich woman in her own right. Sometimes I felt very happy. Then I would think of Dickon.