strength of will not to fleece a black sheep who was so determined to be shorn. Worse than that, though, was his suspicion that every now and then Sir Ratcliffe indulged in some clumsy and obvious cheating—which no one but Cobie appeared to notice.
‘Thought Tum Tum was coming to stay, Lady K.,’ Sir Ratcliffe drawled at Violet in a pause during the game when the men rose, stretched, refreshed their drinks, and lit new cigars. Violet’s brother, Rainey, was leaning against the wall. He was a handsome enough fellow but Cobie had yet to see him sober after seven at night. He was a poor poker player, too. Another piece of knowledge Cobie filed away for possible future use.
‘Met Tum Tum, have you?’ Sir Ratcliffe asked Cobie in his most condescending manner, offering him a cigar, which he refused.
Yes, Cobie had met the Prince of Wales, but left Violet to tell the Rat—as Cobie privately thought of him since saving Lizzie Steele from him—that the Prince had had to remain in London on official business.
‘Don’t have much luck, do you, Grant?’ Now he was more condescending than ever. ‘Cards not runnin’ your way?’
Cobie was all ineffable boyish charm, saying, ‘No, never do, you know. Can’t think why I play the game. Passes the time, though.’
He offered the Rat his most winning smile. ‘You seem to be doing well. Perhaps I ought to take lessons from you.’
He looked up to see Violet’s eyes hard on him. No one else, apart from Mr Van Deusen, had taken his words at other than face value, but Violet, he was discovering, was also no fool—it wouldn’t do to underrate her. Particularly since he was beginning to annoy her by avoiding her bed ever since Dinah had arrived at Moorings. He thought that she was beginning to see a little of what lay below the mask of innocence which he had worn since he had arrived in England.
He decided to cut the whole pointless business short. He rose, and said, ‘Leave my money in the pot, I think I’m ready for bed.’
Sir Ratcliffe said disagreeably, ‘Don’t like losing, Grant? You Yankees never do.’
‘Strictly speaking,’ and this came out so languidly that no one could be offended by it, ‘I’m not a Yankee. Born in the South, you see. Live in New York, I do admit. Sometimes wonder why.’
He thought he heard a snort from Mr Van Deusen but ignored it, and took his leave. He had hardly gone a yard down the corridor before the door opened again and Violet was with him.
‘Cobie!’ she shrilled.
‘Violet,’ he said, and bowed, like the old-world Southern gentleman he had pretended to be, and then, monstrously, he couldn’t resist it. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘You know very well what you can do for me,’ she told him, the light of battle on her lovely face. ‘What you haven’t been doing since Dinah walked into Moorings.’
So, his worst forebodings had come true. Since Dinah had arrived, a fortnight ago, he had watched Violet humiliate her daily, along the lines of that first afternoon in the library. In the last few days he had taken to avoiding the girl to save her from Violet’s tongue, where in the beginning he had sought to amuse her.
She touches my hard heart, he thought, wryly. She didn’t touch Violet’s. Neither did he wish to touch Violet, and again, he regretted ever having become involved with her.
Desolately he knew that Violet’s public ill treatment of the child was to punish him, as well as her. Violet brooked no rivals, and ridiculously, improbably, she saw poor Dinah as a rival.
As usual he thought quickly, then offered her, ‘I could hardly be your cavaliere servente while Kenilworth was hovering, Violet. Not seemly.’
‘Kenilworth is not hovering, Cobie. He knows perfectly well why I asked you, as he asked Daisy Masham.’ She put out a hand to him. ‘You may escort me upstairs. Our rooms are quite near.’
There was nothing for it. He had meant to try to leave Moorings early without offending her—but she was now determined to be offended unless he did what she asked.
Every fibre of his body revolted at the notion. And when, having taken her arm, and he had begun to walk her up to her room for her poor sister’s sake, if for nothing else, she said, in a poisonously sweet voice, ‘Oh, and by the way, Cobie, there is one more favour you can do me—do the both of us.’
He took her hand and put it to his lying lips. ‘Of course, Violet, my darling, and what is that?’
She shook her head, ‘Oh, it’s Dinah again. Too ridiculous, the poor child obviously thinks that you have a tendre for her. All that attention you’ve given her—playing to her on the guitar…chess games…talking to her in the library…walking with her in the gardens…encouraging her to think of going to Oxford—has quite turned her head. I think that you ought to disabuse her of the notion that you are interested in her—very firmly. I warn you, if you don’t, I will. She really ought to have nothing to do with such as you,’ and her eyes were on him, hard and cruel.
He knew immediately what she meant, and the kind of blackmail she was subjecting him to. Somehow, she had read him, seen the pity he felt for her unloved sister, and was threatening that, if he failed to do as she asked, Dinah’s public humiliations would continue—might even grow worse. Jealousy is as cruel as the grave, and Violet, astonishingly, was jealous.
For a moment the world reeled about him. Violet had touched some memory in him which she could not know existed. Long ago he had been kind to a waif even more abused than poor Dinah, more even than Lizzie Steele—and his heedless kindness had led directly to her death. Dinah was in no danger of physical death, but she could not, he thought, stand very much more of the treatment which Violet was meting out to her without her inner self being in serious danger.
He had gone quite still again. He stood motionless. He was fighting the red berserker rage which Violet, by her cruelty, had roused in him. He was helpless before her, and she knew it. Sleep with me, humiliate Dinah—and I will leave her alone. All he could do was control himself and offer her what she wanted. At the same time his busy brain was working—after a fashion which would have astonished Violet.
‘You ask a lot of me,’ he said at last.
‘Really, Cobie, really? You surprise me. I had not thought that you favoured children. I thought that you left that to others,’ and she laughed.
Like Sir Ratcliffe, Cobie thought, and Arthur Winthrop—and who else?
‘She is lonely,’ he told Violet gently, ‘and not very happy.’
‘And you make her so? You take a lot upon yourself. After all, it is my sister of whom we speak, not yours. It is I who am concerned about her welfare. It demands that you disillusion her. And be sure that you do it in such a way that I will know that you have done so.
‘Otherwise, my dear, otherwise, I shall immediately send her to my deaf, strict and bad-tempered old aunt in the country to be her permanent companion.’
‘Pax,’ he said, with the sweetest smile he could summon, throwing up his hands like a schoolboy. ‘I think that this is all a great pother about nothing, but have it your way, Violet.’
‘Oh, I intend to do so,’ she told him, mockingly, ‘and now we are here, Cobie. Here is the door to my room. Choose, like the man in the
