“Is it that bad? To see me, I mean?” There was a slight edge to his voice—he couldn’t help it.
She blinked, looked away, looked back at him, as if to check he was actually there.
“Jennifer? Would you like me to leave? I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have bothered you. It’s just that Dougie—”
“They said—they said you. Were. Dead.” Her voice emerged as a series of coughs.
“Dead?”
“In the crash.” She was perspiring, her skin pale and waxy. He wondered, briefly, if she was indeed going to pass out. He took a step forward and steered her to the ledge of the balcony, removing his jacket so that she could sit on it. Her head dropped into her hands, and she gave a low moan. “You can’t be here.” It was as if she was talking to herself.
“What? I don’t understand.” He wondered, briefly, if she had gone mad.
She looked up. “We were in a car. There was a crash . . . It can’t be you! It can’t be.” Her eyes traveled down to his hands, as if she was half expecting them to evaporate.
“A crash?” He knelt beside her. “Jennifer, the last time I saw you was at a club, not in a car.”
She was shaking her head, apparently uncomprehending.
“I wrote you a letter—”
“Yes.”
“—asking you to come away with me.”
She nodded.
“And I was waiting at the station. You didn’t turn up. I thought you’d decided against it. Then I received your letter, forwarded on to me, in which you made the point, repeatedly, that you were married.”
He could say it so calmly, as if it had held no more importance than if he had been waiting for an old friend. As if her absence had not skewed his life, his happiness, for four years.
“But I was coming to you.”
They stared at each other.
Her face fell back into her hands, and her shoulders shook. He stood up, glancing behind her at the lit ballroom, and laid a hand on her shoulder. She flinched as though she’d been burned. He was conscious of the outline of her back through her dress, and his breath stalled in his throat. He couldn’t think clearly. He could barely think at all.
“All this time”—she looked at him, tears in her eyes—“all this time . . . and you were alive.”
“I assumed . . . you just didn’t want to come with me.”
“Look!” She pulled up her sleeve, showing the jagged, raised silver line that scored her arm. “I had no memory. For months. I still remember little of that time. He told me you’d died. He told me—”
“But didn’t you see my name in the newspaper? I have pieces in it almost daily.”
“I don’t read newspapers. Not anymore. Why would I?”
The full ramifications of what she had said were beginning to sink in, and Anthony was feeling a little unsteady on his feet. She turned to the French windows, now half obscured by steam, then wiped her eyes with her fingers. He offered her his handkerchief, and she took it tentatively, as if she was still afraid to make contact with his skin.
“I can’t stay out here,” she said, when she had recovered her composure. Mascara had left a black smear under her eye, and he resisted the urge to wipe it away. “He’ll be wondering where I am.” There were new lines of strain around her eyes; the dewiness of her skin had been supplanted by something tighter. The girlishness had gone, replaced by subtle new knowledge. He couldn’t stop staring at her. “How can I reach you?” he asked.
“You can’t.” She shook her head a little, as if she was trying to clear it.
“I’m staying at the Regent,” he said. “Ring me tomorrow.” He reached into his pocket, scribbled on a business card.
She took it and gazed at it, as if imprinting the details on her memory.
“Here we are.” Douglas had appeared between them. He held out a glass of water. “Your husband is talking to some people just inside the door. I can fetch him, if you like.”
“No—no, I’ll be fine.” She took a sip from the glass. “Thank you so much. I have to go, Anthony.”
The way she had said his name. Anthony. He realized he was smiling. She was there, inches from him. She had loved him, grieved for him. She had tried to come to him that night. It was as if the misery of four years had been wiped away.
“Do you two know each other, then?”
Anthony heard, as if from a distance, Douglas talking, saw him motioning toward the doors. Jennifer sipped the water, her eyes not leaving his face. He knew that in the coming hours he would curse whichever gods had thought it amusing to send their lives careering away from each other, and grieve for the time they had lost. But for now he could only feel a welling joy that the thing he had thought lost forever had been returned to him.
It was time for her to go. She stood up, smoothed her hair. “Do I look . . . all right?”
“You look—”
“You look wonderful, Mrs. Stirling. As always.” Douglas opened the door.
Such a small smile, heartbreaking in what it told Anthony. As she passed him, she reached out a slim hand and touched his arm just above the elbow. And then she walked into the crowded ballroom.
Douglas raised an eyebrow as the door closed behind her. “Don’t tell me,” he said. “Not another of your conquests? You old dog. You always did get what you wanted.”
Anthony’s eyes were still on the door. “No,” he said quietly. “I didn’t.”
Jennifer was silent during the short drive back to the house. Laurence had offered a lift to a business colleague she didn’t know, which meant she could sit quietly while the men talked.
“Of course, Pip Marchant was up to his old tricks, all his capital tied up in one project.”
“He’s a hostage to fortune. His father was the same.”
“I expect if you go far enough back in that family tree you’ll find the South Sea Bubble.”
“I think you’ll find several! All filled with hot air.”
The interior of the big black car was thick with cigar smoke. Laurence was garrulous, opinionated, in the way he often was when surrounded by businessmen or marinated in whiskey. She barely heard him, swamped by this new knowledge. She stared out at the still streets as the car glided along, seeing not the beauty of her surroundings, the occasional person dawdling on their way home, but Anthony’s face. His brown eyes, when they had fixed on hers, his face a little more lined, but perhaps more handsome, more at ease. She could still feel the warmth of his hand on her back.