The Emperor by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles Read Free Book Online

sightlessly round the dark garden. Here – she had been here, in this very place. These hedges had heard her laughter; he had walked with her along these paths, holding her hand. His memory retained the exact impression of her hand, its size and shape, the warm grip of her child-small fingers, though he found it hard now to bring her face to mind.
    She had come here as if to a home which had long awaited her, come to be queen of a kingdom which was glad to be hers. She had loved everything, from the least kitchen boy riddling the grate to the swans on the moat. From the moment of her arrival, the servants had seemed to accept her, without its ever being discussed, as Jemima's natural successor; and she had opened her guileless heart to him and chosen him king.
    The loss of her was like endless darkness. With no further chance of happiness, he had turned to duty. Morland Place needed an heir, and neither of his elder brothers seemed likely to provide one, so in a fit of noble self-sacrifice he had proposed the match between himself and Mary Ann Hobsbawn. The difficulty was that the momentary spasm of self-sacrifice involved a lifetime of living with the reality, and commonplace, day-to-day disappointments were harder to bear than great tragedy and noble grief. He found it hard to think about Mary Ann as a person, or even as his wife: she simply loomed in the background, an inescapable fact; his gaoler.
    He sighed deeply, and then started violently, as he came back to reality to find the inescapable fact standing not ten yards away, watching him. She was a tall woman, well- formed, handsome, with a statuesque calm of bearing which made her easy, for him, to dismiss. She had evidently changed for the evening, for she was wearing a gown of twilled lilac silk, with a heavy, expensive Persian shawl over her shoulders. James did not recognize it – probably a new gift from her father, he thought. Her hair was up, and bound by a fillet of purple velvet ribbon. It was fine, light-brown hair, thin and silky like a child's, difficult to manage, and alread y it was slipping the battery of pins Dakers had used to confine it, and escaping in wisps about her brows. She ought to have it cropped, he thought: it would suit her, with her long, graceful neck; but he did not speak the thought aloud.
    ‘Had you not better change?' she said at last. 'It is almost dinner-time.' Her voice was light and cool and careful, with no hint of her father's accent, or of any emotion of her own.
    ‘ What are you doing here?' James asked. It sounded accusing: he might as well have asked why she was spying on him.
    ‘ I wished for some air,' she said unemphatically. 'I was just going in.' She did not move, however, and at length James felt obliged to rise and walk with her back towards the house.
    ‘ You should not walk out at dusk,' he said after a moment, since some speech seemed necessary. 'You will catch cold.'
    ‘My shawl is very thick,' she replied.
    ‘ Have they all done, in there? Is it all signed and sealed and witnessed?' he said next. She assented with a silent nod. ‘And so now Fanny is an important heiress.'
    ‘ She will inherit your mother's and my father's estates, to be held in trust until her majority, provisionally, of course –'
    ‘ Provisionally?' James leapt upon the word so sharply that Mary Ann almost flinched. 'What do you mean, pro visionally? Fanny is to have everything. That was the bargain.'
    ‘ Indeed, she will – unless the next child is a boy. Naturally a boy would take precedence. If we have a son, he will inherit the estates, and Fanny will have a very hand some dowry, enough to see that she marries as – '
    ‘No!' said James furiously, and he turned to face her and backed off a step, like an animal at bay. 'That was not the bargain! I do not consent!' They were trying to cheat him: he had done his part, and now they were trying to cheat him of the reward.
    Mary Ann regarded her extraordinary husband with