Maisie smiled tearfully. “I knew you would say that.”
Hugh had a sudden vision of Maisie naked, her round freckled breasts and the bush of red-gold hair at her groin, and he wished he could take back his high-principled words. Instead he stood up to go.
Maisie stood up too. “Thank you for coming, dear Hugh,” she said.
He intended to shake her hand but instead he bent to kiss her cheek; and then somehow he found himself kissing her lips. It was a soft, tender kiss that lingered for a long moment and almost destroyed Hugh’s resolve; but then at last he tore himself away and left the room without another word.
Ben Greenbourne’s house was another palace a few yards along Piccadilly. Hugh went straight there after seeing Maisie. He was glad to have something to do, some way of taking his mind off the turmoil in his heart. He asked for the old man. “Say it’s a matter of great urgency,” he told the butler. While he waited he noticed that the mirrors in the hall were covered, and he guessed this was part of the Jewish mourning ritual.
Maisie had thrown him off balance. When he saw her his heart had filled with love and longing. He knew he could never be truly happy without her. But Nora was his wife. She had brought warmth and affection into his life after Maisie rejected him, and that was why he had married her. What was the point of making promises in a wedding ceremony if you were going to change your mind later?
The butler showed Hugh into the library. Six or seven people were just going, leaving Ben Greenbourne alone. He had no shoes on and sat on a plain wooden stool. A table was piled with fruit and pastries for visitors.
Greenbourne was past sixty — Solly had been a late child — and he looked old and worn, but he showed no sign of tears. He stood up, straight-backed and formal as ever, and shook hands, then waved Hugh to another stool.
Greenbourne had an old letter in his hand. “Listen to this,” he said, and he began to read. “‘Dear Papa, We have a new Latin teacher, Reverend Green, and I am getting on much better, ten out of ten every day last week. Waterford caught a rat in the broom cupboard and he is trying to train it to eat out of his hand. The food here is too little, can you send me a cake? Your loving son, Solomon.’” He folded the letter. “He was fourteen when he wrote that.”
Hugh saw that Greenbourne was suffering despite his rigid self-control. “I remember that rat,” he said. “It bit Waterford’s forefinger off.”
“How I wish I could turn back the years,” Greenbourne said, and Hugh saw that the old man’s self-control was weakening.
“I must be one of Solly’s oldest friends,” Hugh said.
“Indeed. He always admired you, although you were younger.”
“I can’t think why. But he was always ready to think the best of people.”
“He was too soft.”
Hugh did not want the conversation to go that way. “I’ve come here not just as Solly’s friend, but as Maisie’s too.”
Greenbourne stiffened immediately. The sad look went from his face and he became the caricature of the upright Prussian again. Hugh wondered how anyone could so hate a woman as beautiful and full of fun as Maisie.
Hugh went on: “I met her soon after Solly did. I fell in love with her myself, but Solly won her.”
“He was richer.”
“Mr. Greenbourne, I hope you will allow me to be frank. Maisie was a penniless girl looking for a rich husband. But after she married Solly she kept her part of the bargain. She was a good wife to him.”
“And she has had her reward,” Greenbourne said. “She has enjoyed the life of a lady for five years.”
“Funnily enough, that’s what she said. But I don’t think it’s good enough. What about little Bertie? Surely you don’t want to leave your grandson destitute?”
“Grandson?” said Greenbourne. “Hubert is no relation to me.”
Hugh had an odd premonition that something momentous was about to happen. It was like a nightmare in which a frightening but nameless horror was about to strike. “I don’t understand,” he said to Greenbourne. “What do you mean?”
“That woman was already with child when she married my son.”
Hugh gasped.
“Solly knew it, and he knew the child was not his,” Greenbourne went on. “He took her all the same — against my will, I need hardly add. People generally don’t know this, of course: we went to great lengths to keep it secret, but there’s no need to any longer, how that—” He broke off, swallowed hard, and continued. “They went around the world after the wedding. The child was born in Switzerland; they gave out a false birth date; by the time they came home, having been away for almost two years, it was hard to tell that the baby was actually four months older than they said.”
Hugh felt as if his heart had stopped. There was a question he had to ask, but he was terrified of the answer. “Who — who was the father?”
“She would never say,” Greenbourne said. “Solly never knew.”
But Hugh did.
The child was his.
He stared at Ben Greenbourne, unable to speak.
He would talk to Maisie, and make her tell the truth, but he knew she would confirm his intuition. She had never been promiscuous, despite appearances. She had been a virgin when he seduced her. He had made her pregnant, on that first night. Then Augusta had contrived to split them up, and Maisie had married Solly.
She had even called the baby Hubert, a name closely similar to Hugh.
“It is appalling, of course,” Greenbourne said, seeing his consternation and misunderstanding the reason for it.
I have a child, Hugh thought. A son. Hubert. Called Bertie. The thought wrenched at his heart.
“However, I’m sure you now see why I don’t wish to have anything more to do with the woman or her child, now that my dear son has passed away.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Hugh said distractedly. “I’ll take care of them.”
“You?” Greenbourne said, mystified. “Why should it be any concern of yours?”
“Oh … well, I’m all they’ve got, now, I suppose,” Hugh said.
“Don’t get sucked in, young Pilaster,” Greenbourne said kindly. “You’ve got a wife of your own to worry about.”
Hugh did not want to explain and he was too dazed to make up a story. He had to get away. He stood up. “I must go. My deepest condolences, Mr. Greenbourne. Solly was the best man I ever knew.”
Greenbourne bowed his head. Hugh left him.
In the hall with the shrouded mirrors he took his hat from the footman and went out into the sunshine of Piccadilly. He walked west and entered Hyde Park, heading for his home in Kensington. He could have taken a hansom but he wanted time to think.
Everything was different now. Nora was his legal wife but Maisie was the mother of his son. Nora could look after herself — and so could Maisie, for that matter — but a child needed a father. Suddenly the question of what he was to do with the rest of his life was open again.
No doubt a clergyman would say that nothing had changed and he should stay with Nora, the woman he had married in church; but clergymen did not know much. The strict Methodism of the Pilasters had passed Hugh by: he had never been able to believe that the answer to every modern moral dilemma could be found in the Bible. Nora had seduced and married him for coldhearted gain — Maisie was right about that — and all there was between them was a piece of paper. That was very little, weighed against a child — the child of a love so strong that it had persisted for many years and through many trials.
Am I just making excuses, he wondered? Is all this no more than a specious justification for giving in to a desire I know to be wrong?
He felt torn in two.
He tried to consider the practicalities. He had no grounds for divorce, but he felt sure that Nora would be willing to divorce him, if she were offered enough money. However, the Pilasters would ask him to resign from the bank: the social stigma of divorce was too great to allow him to continue as a partner. He could get another job but no respectable people in London would entertain him and Maisie as a couple even after they married. They would almost certainly have to go abroad. But that prospect attracted him and he felt it would appeal to Maisie too. He could return to Boston or, better still, go to New York. He might never be a millionaire but what was that balanced against the joy of being with the woman he had always loved?