are to play quartets to them after dinner. If I do this, will you come back to London with me?’
‘After the weekend, yes.’
‘Tonight.’
‘No. Carry out your engagement, play their Welcome Home nonsense, then we’ll go.’
Whatever happened, I could not desert Celia until either I’d talked her out of elopement or she was safely in the arms of her Philip.
‘I’d rather play his funeral march,’ he said.
I knew then that I’d won my point and gave his hand a squeeze.
‘I’ll leave first. We should not be seen together any more. Will you meet me here tonight, after you’ve played your quartets?’
For reply, he hummed a few bars from Figaro about meeting in the garden, but his dark eyes were miserable. I left him sitting on the water trough.
*
Back in the schoolroom, Betty was mending a pinafore.
‘Where did you get to? Miss Mandeville came looking for you. She wants some more help with her sketching. She said to tell you she’d be on the terrace.’
I found her sitting alone on a bench by a statue of Diana the Huntress, sketchpad on her lap, face shaded by a lavender parasol wedged between the slats of the bench. The sketch consisted of a few vague lines that might have been ploughland or seashore.
‘Where’s Mr Brighton?’ I said.
‘Playing billiards with Stephen.’ She stuck out her lower lip, moistened her finger on it and dabbed at an imaginary billiard cue. ‘How could anybody think I’d marry such a ragdoll of a man? I shouldn’t do it if he were Czar of all the Russias.’
She scored a line across her sketch, so savagely that the point of her pencil broke.
‘Your brother spoke to me about you,’ I said.
She gripped my arm.
‘What did he say?’
‘He thinks you might be on the point of doing something unwise.’
‘You didn’t tell him? Surely you didn’t.’
Her fingers dug into my arm.
‘No, I didn’t.’
She let go of my arm.
‘He said you were close,’ I said.
‘We were. Until this.’
It was no more than a murmur. I thought of Tom and how he’d feel if I were to elope without telling him.
‘I do believe he cares about you,’ I said. ‘Perhaps if you were to make him understand how totally opposed you are to Mr Brighton …’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Stephen does care for me, but he doesn’t understand. And I think he’s scared of my stepfather.’
‘He did not strike me as a person easily scared.’
‘Sir Herbert bought off his IOUs to get him out of prison. He could use them to put him back, if he wanted.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Stephen told me that himself. You mustn’t tell him, Elizabeth. I forbid you to even think about telling him.’
She scored another line across the page, splintering wood from the broken pencil.
‘Why did you want to see me?’ I asked.
‘Philip is coming for me on Saturday night, at nine o’clock. He’ll have a carriage waiting on the back road. I want you to come with me.’
‘Elope with you?’
‘Of course not. Just as far as the carriage. I don’t know my way down the back road and I’ll have things to carry. And we must be so much more careful now, if Stephen suspects.’
Her fingers picked nervously at the pencil.
‘It’s a serious decision to make, leaving your family,’ I said.
‘Do you think I don’t know that? I’ll probably never see my mother again, or Stephen, or Betty.’
Tears ran down her cheeks.
‘Perhaps if you were to speak to your mother …’
‘What good would that do? She’s terrified of my stepfather too, surely you’ve seen that. I dread to think what he’ll do to her after I’ve gone.’
‘He could hardly blame her.’
‘He will. I suppose you think badly of me, leaving my mother in danger.’
‘I hope she will not be in danger.’
‘I hope so too, with all my heart. But she chose to marry him and she’ll always be unhappy now, whatever happens. Does that mean I must waste my life too?’
‘So you won’t speak to either of them?’
‘No. If I spoke to anybody it might be my grandmother, but …’
‘Perhaps you should.’
I was on the edge of telling her about Mrs Beedle’s behaviour but stopped myself. It wasn’t my secret.
‘No, I’ve made my choice and I choose Philip, and that’s all there is to it.’
‘This Philip, do you know him well?’
I cared enough for her to hope she wasn’t throwing herself away on some worthless man just to escape.
‘Of course I do. A year ago, we were practically engaged to be married.’
‘But your stepfather disapproved?’
‘No, that’s the cruel part of it.’
‘What happened?’
‘Philip and I met at Weymouth last summer. Sir Herbert was prescribed sea bathing for pain in his joints, so of course we all had to pack up and go. Philip’s father was there for the bathing too. I think my stepfather approved, as far as he cared at all. It would get me off his hands without having to pay a settlement because Philip’s family are very comfortably situated. They have an estate in Buckinghamshire and Philip will inherit a baronetcy if his uncle dies before he has any children, and the uncle’s sixty-three and a bachelor, so …’
She paused for breath.
‘So altogether a most suitable match,’ I said.
