LITMIR.BIZ

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sauce, and then wild strawberries in a silver dish. Amy ate with a small sigh of contentment that earned her another of Jack Roper’s blue glances, followed by a quizzical smile. She was sitting beside him and had to turn slightly to see his profile. His beaked nose gave him a forbidding air, until he too turned and looked at her again. Amy felt suddenly that her curled fingers were damp around the stem of her glass.

      They had all been talking, Adeline leading them in her pretty drawl, her face alight with vivacity and her eyes brighter than usual. But when she saw the look, and Amy as lovely as a flower with the diamonds cuffing her wrists, the mask slipped and sagged.

      She held out her glass to be refilled and then, when the servants had gone again, she motioned to Richard to do it once more.

      One by one the three of them saw it and felt it, looking back at Adeline across her perfect table. In the course of a single meal Adeline had grown haggard.

      The talk limped on. Amy and Richard had to lean heavily, for the moment, on Jack Roper’s urbanity. He had an admirable fund of London gossip and he gently pushed the tastiest titbits across the table, trying to tempt Adeline back into the circle. He had dined the night before with the Channons.

      ‘And do you know what Honor told me about Sylvia Ashley?’

      Richard glanced sideways at his mother, and then his hand slid to cover hers on the polished table top.

      At length, Adeline collected herself. There were sudden deep lines at the side of her mouth, showing under the peachy-pale make-up that had once hidden everything.

      ‘I think we’ve all had enough of this luncheon, darlings. Shall we go and have a little cup of coffee?’

      Her voice was slurred, a drawl within a drawl. They walked slowly back to the white drawing room, with Richard and Jack supportively on either side of her as if she was an old woman.

      Amy came behind them, caught short in miserable confusion.

      Adeline sat in the corner of one of the sofas. She smoothed the black and fuchsia folds of her dress around her and then she lifted her hand to shade her eyes a little.

      ‘Sit here, beside me,’ she commanded and Jack Roper sat down. He went on talking smoothly about New York and London, and about old friends, as Richard poured coffee into little gilt-rimmed cups. Adeline drank two cups and then, seemingly as quickly as she had let the mask slip, she was herself again.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured to Jack Roper. In answer he took her hand and smiled at her, and the lines in Adeline’s face were invisible again. Watching the two of them, Amy understood that Adeline would always command devotion from the men who had loved her. Even from Gerald. Perhaps especially from Gerald, and that was part of his sadness.

      Surprisingly, the lunch party ended as cheerfully as it had begun.

      Richard went over to the liqueurs tray and raised his eyebrows at them. ‘I’m going to have some of this green chartreuse, for no better reason than that it matches my tie. Mama? There isn’t anything pink, I’m sorry to say. Amy? Mr Roper?’

      Adeline fluttered her fingers. ‘Not a single drop more for me. It makes me feel so lugubrious today.’

      Jack Roper had a brandy, and smoked a cigar. Amy leaned back against the cushions and sniffed appreciatively at the mingled scents of flowers, cigar smoke and Chanel.

      ‘I’m so pleased to be home,’ she said, and Adeline looked round meditatively at her.

      ‘I wish you were here more often. It wouldn’t come as such a shock, then, to see that you have grown up.’

      At length, Jack Roper stood up to say goodbye. He kissed Adeline, turning her face so that his lips met the corner of her mouth. She bent her head, and touched one finger against the grey lapel of his suit.

      ‘Amy, perhaps you would see Mr Roper downstairs for me?’

      Amy wasn’t sure that she wanted to be left alone with Jack Roper, but she nodded obediently as the men shook hands and then she walked with Jack beside her, under the well of light that splashed the line of Lovell portraits and to the head of the stairs. He was much taller than she was, and the bulk of him was a little intimidating.

      As they paused before the long sweep downwards, he asked, ‘What do you do, Amy? Are you a nurse?’

      His quickness unsettled her.

      ‘Yes. How do you know that?’

      ‘Ah.’ They began to descend, their muffled footfalls losing themselves in the still space. ‘I didn’t think, from your enjoyment of the little things, that today was quite ordinary for you. And your hands look as if you do more than go to parties. So does your hair. And nursing is the kind of thing a girl like you might do. Even though you like diamond bracelets as well. Or perhaps because of that?’

      His finger on the truth reminded her of Helen. The memory pained her, as always.

      Abruptly Amy said, ‘I work at the Royal Lambeth. I am home for my two weeks’ leave.’

      They reached the foot of the stairs and crossed the marble floor to the front door. At once a footman materialized, holding the visitor’s hat. Jack took it, and waited until they were alone again.

      ‘Two weeks,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘That doesn’t give us very long, does it?’

      Amy said nothing. She had the sudden feeling that she was holding a conch shell to her ear, listening to the sea surging within the pearly folds.

      ‘May I telephone you?’

      Amy looked directly at him now. There were darker flecks in the bright blue irises. ‘I don’t think so.’

      Jack Roper smiled. ‘Your mother and I understand each other. Ask her, if you don’t believe me.’ She opened her mouth to say something that would imply she didn’t understand, and then she thought better of it. She realized that Jack Roper habitually left out the intervening, polite sentences that ordinary people might have mouthed for form’s sake.

      ‘I don’t want to hurt her,’ Amy said clearly. ‘I don’t know quite what happened this afternoon …

      He interrupted her. ‘Oh, I think you do. You should talk to Adeline about it. She has an unusual capacity for friendship. Particularly, I would think, with her own children.’ They stood for a moment looking at one another. Then, in quite a different voice, he said, ‘Diamonds suit you. With a neck as beautiful as yours you should be wearing diamond earrings. Long, extravagant ones that glitter as you dance. I know that it was your twenty-first birthday a month ago, because I remember the day you were born.’

      Suddenly, the deep-sea roaring in Amy’s ears threatened to deafen her. The blood pounded like Atlantic surf in her head.

      ‘I shall buy you a birthday pair, and I will present them to you over dinner the day after tomorrow.’

      ‘No …’ Amy said weakly, and he raised one eyebrow as he laughed at her.

      ‘Amy, where do you imagine all your mother’s jewels in their chic Cartier settings came from? Those diamond handcuffs, for example? They’re not musty old Lovell heirlooms, are they, not like those monumental family rubies that look like drops of bullock’s blood?’

      Amy was too afraid of the new, terrifying idea that had swept down on her even to speak. Jack Roper went on: ‘They were given to her. By men who loved and admired her. You should be prepared to accept tributes in the same way, Amy.’

      He turned his hat in his fingers, preparing to put it on. ‘Until the day after tomorrow.’ Then Jack Roper opened the door and strode down the steps, settling his hat on his silver-fair hair. Amy had a last glimpse of him walking purposefully away towards Bond Street before she closed the door and leant briefly against the safe barrier of it.

      It was a long moment before she walked back up the stairs to the drawing room. Adeline and Richard were sitting on the sofa. Richard’s arm was round his mother’s

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