‘No, thank you, Mr Durrant.’ Her voice is clipped in spite of herself.
‘Then I’ll bid you fine ladies a good day.’ He makes them an ironic little bow and saunters away towards the gate. When he passes out of sight, Amelia turns to her sister and gives her an appraising look.
‘We have much to talk about,’ she says, as they walk into the house. Inside the hall, Cat bends down again, and sets her back to the heavy case for the second time.
The two sisters settle themselves in the shade of a cherry tree on the terrace to the rear of the house, where the slightest of breezes stirs the torpid air. They sit on iron filigree chairs, which are so hot that they glow through their skirts onto the backs of their legs. Amelia wafts air gently over her face with a beautiful silk fan, her gaze instinctively following her children as they weave and skip around the garden, playing with an almost grim determination, their eyes screwed up, brows furrowed.
‘I have never known such heat as this summer!’ she exclaims at last. ‘On my way here just now, we passed a group of children playing in the street, and do you know what they were doing? They were collecting bubbles of melted tar from the road on twigs of straw, and using it as glue to stick the pieces onto the side of a barn, to make letters and pictures! Melted tar, at not ten in the morning!’
‘It is extraordinary. I find it most draining, don’t you?’ Hester agrees.
‘Truly. You didn’t mention in your letters that Mr Durrant was quite so very …’
‘Very what?’
‘So very young and handsome,’ Amelia says, watching her sister closely.
‘I must have said he was young? As for handsome … I hadn’t really noticed, to be perfectly honest. Is he?’ Hester replies, evasively. She feels suddenly self-conscious, as if caught out in a lie.
‘You know he is – don’t play the innocent with me. You have eyes, haven’t you? Or do you only have eyes for Albert?’
‘Perhaps that’s it … Anyway, he’s our guest. Of course I don’t think of him that way. And besides …’ She trails off awkwardly, not quite sure what she had been about to say.
‘Yes?’
‘No, nothing. But tell me, Amy, please – what’s troubling you?’ Hester asks, keen to change the subject. Cat comes over to the table with a tray of iced tea and lemonade, freshly cut oranges and slices of Madeira cake. Cloudy droplets of sweat scatter her brow. Amelia waits until the servant has gone back indoors before she sighs.
‘You must never speak of it to a soul, not even to Albert. Do you promise? Well … the trouble that you have with Albert, dearest … the trouble that you write to me about? I fear I have just the opposite trouble with Archie.’ She touches her fan to her lips as if reluctant to let the words out.
‘I … don’t quite understand you, Amy,’ Hester whispers, as the children run close by, faces flushed and hair damped down with sweat.
‘I found him … making … making a fool of himself the other day. With the upstairs maid, Danielle.’
‘No! Oh, my darling … that is dreadful! Are you sure?’
‘Very sure indeed, I fear. Oh, I’ve got rid of the girl, of course. This all happened just this week, and truth be told it’s why he’s not come away with us on this visit. And it has happened before, though I never told you, Hetty. I was so ashamed … But he promised, he promised me it would never happen again. Now he says that he has drives he must satisfy, and that he cannot help himself,’ she says, with an angry little catch in her voice. ‘Do you think that can be true? Do you think a man may be made a slave to his desires?’ Hester thinks carefully before answering. She takes her sister’s hand, but their skin is hot and soon grows clammy where it touches.
‘I think … I think any person can be a slave to their desire, if they allow themselves to be. Surely the measure of any person alive is in their behaviour – in what they choose to do, in spite of what other options are available to them?’
‘You’re right,’ Amelia says, bleakly. ‘There is no excusing what he has done. It is despicable.’
‘Now, Amelia, you of all people know that I can’t be counted as any kind of authority on the wants and desires of men,’ Hester says, smiling a little. ‘Archie has committed a great sin, both against you and against God. But perhaps … forgiveness is the Christian thing to do? Once the guilty party has repented, of course …’
‘But that’s just it, Hetty! This time … this time he didn’t even seem repentant. He seemed … angry with me, if anything – for interrupting him at his sport! Oh, it was dreadful! Intolerable!’ She sinks her face into her fingertips and begins to cry quietly.