I did not like Ravenscliff by instinct, but I was beginning to find him fascinating. A book-reading, Socialist-sympathising, child-begetting capitalist fraud. Wilf Cornford at Seyd's had told me he was nothing but money; he was beginning to be very much more than that. Too much more, in fact.

'They told me you were still here,' came the voice of Lady Ravenscliff from the door. I looked up. It was getting dark in the room and I glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. Nearly eight o'clock. No wonder I felt uncomfortable. I was hungry. No more nor less than that. That was a relief.

'Working away,' I said cheerfully.

'And have you discovered anything?'

'Not on the main question, no,' I said, dragging my thoughts away from the disappearing millions and resolving to follow Franklin's advice. 'Merely some things which revive the nosy old journalist in me.'

I handed her the sheet of paper about the Brotherhood. She looked at it with a very prettily arched eyebrow, then her glance returned to me.

'Did your husband start going around calling for world revolution in his last months?' I asked. 'Tell the butler over the kedgeree that property was theft, and how he should throw off his chains?'

'Not to my knowledge. He rarely said anything over breakfast. He usually read The Times.'

'Then this is a bit of a curiosity, don't you think?'

She looked again at the piece of paper. 'It is. Have you ever heard of these people?'

'No,' I said, a little disingenuously. It was true, but these sorts of people had been talked about at my socialist reading group. If such an admission could have produced in her a look of alarm at my dangerous political associations, I might have mentioned it, but I suspected it would produce nothing more than contempt and even pity. Earnest men in scruffy clothes in a dingy room arguing about things they had no power to alter. Well, it was a bit like that.

'I imagine they are some sort of revolutionary group,' I said lamely.

'How very odd.' She tossed the paper aside, and changed the subject. 'I was wondering whether you have eaten? And if not whether you would care to do so? I am not in the mood for company, but do not wish to dine alone. You would do me a great kindness if you accepted.'

I looked up, my eyes caught hers and my world changed forever.

I was paralysed; literally, I could not move. Rather than simply looking at her eyes, I seemed to be peering deep into her soul. I felt as though I had been punched in the stomach. How can I put it? Lady Ravenscliff vanished from my mind to be replaced by Elizabeth; I can give no better account of the transformation in my mind. Her vulnerability and her pride were both part of it, I suppose, as were her beauty, and her voice, and the way she moved. A strand of dark-brown hair hanging down over her left eye made all the difference in the world, as did the slightest glimpse of a collarbone above the top of her dark dress.

Something happened to her as well, I believed, although I could not tell whether it was real, or simply a reflection of what was going on inside my head. I could not tell if I truly saw something, or glimpsed only what I wanted there to be. I looked away eventually, and had I been required to move just then I do not know if I would have managed to do so without trembling.

I had no idea what happened, or rather how it happened. I still do not. I was, naturally, aware that it was quite ridiculous. For me, a young man of twenty-five to become transfixed by a woman nearly twenty years older than I, a member of the aristocracy, my employer, and a recent widow still genuinely in mourning for her husband. A woman whose annual pin money was as much as I was likely to earn in the next decade. How much more ludicrous could anything be?

Then I became aware that, although I hoped that Elizabeth had noticed nothing, she too had fallen quite silent, and was looking away from me at the fire.

'You are tired,' I said, trying to be hearty but merely sounding nervous instead. 'It is kind of you to invite me, but I really must see what I can discover about this matter tomorrow.' I wanted to get out of that house, out of her presence as quickly as possible. It was all I could do not to bolt for the door.

She looked back at me and smiled wanly. 'Very well. I will dine alone. Will you come back with your discoveries?'

'Only if there is something to tell. I do not wish to waste your time.'

We rose, and I shook her hand. She did not look at me, nor I at her.

I was sweating when I got into the street although the air was cool. I felt as though I had just escaped from a furnace, or from some mortal danger. All the way home her face and her perfume and her smile, and those eyes, danced in my head and refused to obey my instructions that they should leave me alone. They were phantoms, nothing more. Again I slept badly that night.

CHAPTER 15

I will not describe the next day. Not because it wasn't interesting, but more because getting anything done was a supreme act of will when all I wanted to do was sit and stare and think thoughts I should never have allowed inside my mind. And at six o'clock, when I again entered the house, I knew the entire day had been spent killing time, waiting for the moment when I could see her again. And not wanting to, because anything which was likely to take place could only be a disappointment after the previous evening. Even though nothing whatsoever had happened then.

She received me, we talked about little of importance. There was an awkwardness in our conversation which I had not noticed before. I could not talk to her as an employee, someone doing a job for her, an expert at my task. But I dared not adopt any other tone and, in any case, was hardly experienced enough to do so.

After a particularly long pause during which the fire in the grate seemed to become of excessive importance to both of us – it was better than avoiding each other's gaze – she turned back to me once more.

'May I ask you a question?'

'Of course.'

'Did you wish to kiss me last night?'

I didn't know what to say. Tell the truth? That would alter things totally; I could never stand in front of her and talk to her in a normal way again. And I did not know, still, how she would reply. As I have said, the ways of the aristocracy, and of foreigners, and of women, were a mystery to me. I did not understand her in the slightest; I could not untangle what I thought from what I wanted to think. All I knew was that the sudden shortness of breath, the racing of my heart, had returned even more powerfully than the previous evening.

'Yes,' I said after a long pause. 'Very much.' There was another long silence. 'What would you have done if I had?'

She smiled, but only very faintly. 'I would have kissed you back,' she said. 'I am glad you did not.'

My heart fell. My small experience was limited to girls who either wanted to be kissed, or did not. Not women who wanted both at the same time. But I knew what she meant.

'Your ladyship . . .'

'I think, in the circumstances, you might call me Elizabeth,' she replied, 'if you wish to do so. And also I think it would be best to talk of it no more. We both know quite well that relations have changed between us. It is foolish not to recognise it, to some measure.'

But how had they changed? I wanted to ask. What am I meant to do? What do you want of me?

'You must think very badly of me; I am quite shocked by myself, although not as much as I should be. I am an immoral foreigner and blood will out. That does not mean I feel free to act on my desires.'

That was something, at least, although I did not know what. All sorts of explanations went through my head. This was a woman crazed by her loss who was defying fate by having such thoughts, by deliberately acting in such a fashion. Or, she was a woman who (so I assumed) had not made love to anyone for years, and was no longer in control of herself. I even considered that she might like me, that I was the only person who could offer her any sort of understanding. That I was the only person who knew anything of what she might feel. That was the most dangerous, insidious option.