Nine Coaches Waiting

‘Léon liked you too. He said you were gallant. That was the word. He said: “She’s a gallant little devil and it’d be a pity if we had to bring her down.”’

There was a strong wet smell of earth and growing things; the smell of spring … not softness, not balm-and-blossoms, but something harsh and sharp that pierced the senses as the thrust of new life broke the ground. The cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land …

I was also making a grim little discovery that frightened me. The dreams might be moonshine, but the fact remained. I was in love with him. It hadn’t been the wine and the starlight and all the trappings of romance. It hadn’t even been the charm that he’d been so lavish with that night. Now I was undoubtedly sober and it was raining and the charm w

I didn’t feel it necessary to insist in front of the child that, but for the tumble, he would probably now be dead. But Madame de Valmy understood that. She was so white that I thought she would faint. The pale eyes, watching Philippe, held a look, unmistakably, of horror. So she did care after all, I thought, surprised and a little touched.

That’s why we were so surprised when Master Philip’s Nanny was dismissed after being with the family all those years, and they said a new girl was coming from England.’

Her eyes as she smiled at me were friendly, almost warm, and for the first time since I had met her I saw charm in her – not the easy charm of the vivid personality, but the real and irresistible charm that reaches out halfway to meet you, assuring you that you are wanted and liked.

Someone was coming down the stairs. I could hear the click of high-heeled shoes. I waited, perhaps still in some faint hope that it might be somebody I knew. It wasn’t. It was a young woman, cheap and smart, with that tight-black-sweater-and-skirt smartness made to look very Place Vendôme with ropes of improbable pearls. She was blonde, and chewed

Something will come of this. I hope it mayn’t be human gore. Dickens: Barnaby Rudge.

He flirted a very little, too – oh, so expertly! – and looked slightly disconcerted and then delighted when he found that his gallantries amused instead of confusing me. He would have been even more disconcerted if he’d known that, in a queer sort of way, he was reminding me of Daddy: I hadn’t heard this sort of clever, over-sophisticated chatter s