Chapter Thirty-One
Maureen
Maureen knew Honor wouldn’t tell Duff to come up to her, but she also knew that he would arrive of his own accord.
She had been asleep by the time he came up the night before – had known she would be, seeing the rate at which he was drinking – and still asleep by the time he got up that morning.
But she was ready when she heard his tap on the door.
The house had quietened a little by then. Breakfast must be over, and the servants had moved on to the next phase of their days.
She was ready for him. She had bathed, brushed her hair and let it loose around her face. She had half-closed the curtains again, wondering with a laugh if Honor would notice and what she would think, and was sitting up in bed when she heard his knock.
‘I’ve brought you the newspaper. And a cup of tea.’
‘You are kind. Come and sit with me?’ She patted the side of the bed closest to her.
He came and sat, the bed shifting under his weight.
‘Breakfast was a bit like boarding school,’ he said, putting a cigarette to his lips.
His hand shook slightly and his eyes were rimmed with red.
She stretched out a hand and took the cigarette from him before he could light it and dropped it onto the floor.
Then, kneeling up in bed, she leaned forward to kiss him.
After a moment, he leaned back, pulled away, then reached out and patted her face with his hand.
‘I’d better get on,’ he said. ‘I must go and change. The tennis.’
‘Never mind the tennis.’
‘Oh, but they do mind. Brigid has done a plan. It wouldn’t be fair.’
How often had she done it herself, Maureen thought when he was gone. Pretended something wouldn’t be fair – to the servants, the children, even her dogs – in order to get out of what she didn’t want to do without direct confrontation. Why did they all pretend so hard?
With Duff gone, she lay back down in the bed, hating the faint damp that had already gathered under the feather bolster, anticipation of the day’s heat. She knew she should get up, dress, turn back the bed, but Duff’s departure had left her without the energy.
She knew he loved her. Knew he desired her.
She could see it in the way he looked at her.
It was in his voice, the touch of his hand.
Had even been in the rage she could drive him to in those terrible fights of theirs, that were so often followed by love-making almost as intense and violent as the fighting.
Was that what was missing? she wondered now.
Was it that the rows had been necessary?
A prelude? Surely not. Except that when she thought of it, the two things had dwindled at the same time.
Her resolution not to allow the furious arguments, not since she had discovered she was pregnant with Sheridan, had held good.
There had been no more of those violent exchanges between them, no broken glass, no objects thrown.
But since then, it seemed that he avoided her, so subtly that it was only now she looked for it that she saw a pattern.
In public he was courteous, attentive, if anything more so than before.
But in private, when it was just the two of them, he sat always at a slight distance, and shifted out of her way if she came too close to him.
Almost, she thought, as though something about her smelled bad.
What was she now to him? A companion and hostess?
Someone to further his political career and bait traps for men he wished to entice?
She would not be those things, she thought furiously.
She would not. Better to be the person who drove him to white-hot rage, than one who brought about only a dull shrug.