She stole away, ashamed of her furtive tenderness for him - so primitive, so despicable, to be moved to folly, simply because he was male.
He would no doubt grow up to be fat, and gross, and unattractive, making some woman miserable.
Someone - William she supposed - had cut a sprig of lilac and placed it in her room, on the mantelshelf, beneath the portrait of herself.
It filled the room with scent, heady and sweet.
Thank God, she thought, as she undressed, there will be no pattering feet of spaniels, no scratching noises, no doggy smells, and the great deep bed is mine alone.
Her own portrait looked down at her with interest.
Have I that sulky mouth, she thought, that petulant frown? Did I look like that six, seven years ago?
Do I look like it still?
She pulled on her nightgown, silken and white, and cool, and stretched her arms above her head, and leant from the casement.
The branches stirred against the sky.
Below the garden, away down in the valley, the river ran to meet the tide.
She pictured the fresh water, bubbling with the spring rains, surging against the salt waves, and how the two would mingle and become one, and break upon the beaches.
She pulled the curtains back, so that the light should flood the room, and she turned to her bed, placing her candlestick on the table at her side.
Then drowsing, half asleep, watching the moon play patterns on the floor, she wondered what other scent it was that mingled itself with the lilac, a stronger, harsher smell, something whose name eluded her.
It stung her nostrils even now, as she turned her head on the pillow.
It seemed to come from the drawer beneath the table, and stretching out her arm she opened the drawer, and looked inside.
There was a book there, and a jar of tobacco.
It was the tobacco she had smelt of course.
She picked up the jar, the stuff was brown and strong and freshly cut.
Surely William had not the audacity to sleep in her bed, to lie there, smoking, looking at her portrait?
That was a little too much, that was really unforgivable.
There was something so personal about this tobacco, so very unlike William, that surely she must be mistaken - and yet - if William had lived here at Navron, for a year, alone?
She opened the book - was he then a reader as well?
And now she was more baffled than before, for the book was a volume of poetry, French poetry, by the poet Ronsard, and on the fly-leaf someone had scribbled the initials
"J. B. A. - Finisterre" and underneath had drawn a tiny picture of a gull.
CHAPTER IV
When she awoke the next morning, her first thought was to send for William, and, confronting him with the jar of tobacco and the volume of poetry, to enquire whether he had slept ill on his new mattress, and whether he had missed the comfort of her bed.
She played with the idea, amusing herself at the picture of his small inscrutable face colouring up at last, and his button mouth dropping in dismay, and then, when the heavy-footed maid brought her breakfast, stumbling and blushing in her awkwardness, raw country girl that she was, she decided to bide her time, to wait a few days, for something seemed to warn her that any admission of her discovery would be premature, out of place.
So she left the tobacco-jar, and the poetry, in the table drawer beside her bed, and when she rose, and dressed, and went downstairs, she found the dining-hall and the salon had been swept and cleaned, as she had commanded, there were fresh flowers in the rooms, the windows were opened wide, and William himself was polishing the tall candlesticks on the wall.
He enquired at once if she had slept well, and she answered, "Yes," thinking instantly that this would be the moment, and could not prevent herself from adding,
"And you too, I hope, were not fatigued by our arrival?"
At which he permitted himself a smile, saying,
"You are very thoughtful, my lady.
No, I slept well, as always.
I heard Master James cry once in the night, but the nurse soothed him.
It seemed strange to hear a child's cry in the house after the long silence."
"You did not mind?" she said.
"No, my lady.
The sound took me back to my own childhood.
I was the eldest in a family of thirteen.
There were always little ones arriving."
"Is your home near here, William?"
"No, my lady."
And now there was a new quality in his voice, a note of finality.
As though he said:
"A servant's life is his own.
Do not intrude upon it."
And she had the insight to leave it, to question him no more.
She glanced at his hands. They were clean and waxen white, no tobacco stains upon them, and there was an impersonal soapy texture about the whole of him, vastly different from that male tobacco smell, so harsh and brown, in the jar upstairs.
Perhaps she maligned him, perhaps the jar had stood there for three years - since Harry's last visit to the estate, when she had not accompanied him.