pleasant stay here at Morancourt.”
She nearly added, “with you,” but she suddenly felt so emotional that she feared she might burst into tears.
“Oh! Of course you may do so if you wish.”
“Thank you. I have been so busy enjoying myself that I have not had time to use the small box of paints and the few sheets of watercolour paper that I brought with me from Bath.”
Julia turned and, without saying any more, went up the stairs to fetch them.
It was some two hours later that Aunt Lucy came to find her.
“Julia, I have been searching for you all over the house. Fortunately, I learnt that Mr. Hatton knew where you were. How is your painting?”
Julia rose from the seat at the table she had been using, allowing her aunt to see what she had been doing. The watercolour was not a bad copy of the painting on the wall, and at the bottom Julia had just written “
“What does that mean, my dear?”
“It is a nickname, but I suppose that you could otherwise call it ‘Paradise.’ ”
Her aunt, surprised, looked from the painting to her niece without saying anything, but she put her arm around Julia’s shoulders for a few moments and held her tightly.
Then Aunt Lucy said, “It is nearly time to dress for dinner, my dear,” before she turned away and left the room.
Julia looked out of the window of the library for a few minutes without seeing anything. Then she put her painting materials into the box and closed the lid, rolled up her copy of the picture, and hurried to take everything back upstairs.
Mrs. Jones and the cook had clearly decided to surpass themselves in preparing the dishes on the menu for dinner. They had even, Julia discovered, prepared one of the desserts using the lemons that Julia had bought in Beaminster.
“I suppose,” said Mr. Hatton, “that this is the Derbyshire pudding that you mentioned to me the other day?”
“Of course, sir,” said Julia with an equally enigmatic expression.
Aunt Lucy clearly enjoyed this repartee, and the rest of the meal. She was looking fully restored to health, and dinner passed with many happy exchanges of views.
At nine o’clock, Aunt Lucy rose from her chair and said firmly, “Now my dears, I am going to my room to finish the packing with Martha. In particular, I shall be wrapping the miniature rocking horse very carefully as a happy memento of my dear friend Susannah. Thank you again for letting me have that gift, Mr. Hatton.”
He bowed his head to her briefly in acknowledgment. “I shall not be coming downstairs again until tomorrow morning. But I do expect to hear that Julia has become an expert at the waltz when I see you both then, Christopher.”
Mr. Hatton and Julia rose to their feet and wished her good night as she left the room. For a short while, there was an awkward silence.
Then he said, “Miss Maitland, am I right in saying that Mrs. Harrison used my Christian name to give me permission to use yours?”
“Yes, I suppose that you must be right, for I have never heard her call you that before.”
“Then please come with me now, Julia.”
And he walked from the end of the room around the side of the dining table and held his hand out to her. When she offered hers in return, he clasped it firmly, and they went through the house, pushed the stiff doors open, and entered the ballroom.
There, to her surprise, Julia found that there were four groups of candelabra with the candles already lit. The curtains had been drawn against the night, and the drabness of the decorations did not seem to matter as much as they had before.
“First,” he said, “please stand back over there and I will try to give you a demonstration of my part in the dance.”
Julia stood still at the side of the ballroom, and Mr. Hatton began to hum to himself.
“It is a tempo, like this—ONE, two, three. ONE, two, three. ONE, two, three. ONE, two, three. ONE, two, three.” After he had established the rhythm, he began to move his feet in time, holding his arms out to an imaginary partner, turning his body and crossing the length of the ballroom as he did so, back and forth.
“You are not meant to take this too seriously, Julia!”
As she had been smiling at him since he began to hum the tune, she did not have much difficulty with that.
“ONE, two, three. ONE, two, three. ONE, two, three. ONE, two, three. ONE, two, three,” he continued for a few minutes more.
“Now, Julia, for your part. The ladies have to echo, reflect, the same steps but whilst moving backwards, and facing their partner. That must be more difficult, I suppose? Try it first on your own.”
Julia began to move slowly across the ballroom, humming the tune as she did so, “ONE, two, three. ONE, two, three. ONE, two, three. ONE, two, three. ONE, two, three.”
He smiled at her encouragingly.
Julia then went back in the opposite direction, repeating the tune as she went, “ONE, two, three. ONE, two, three. ONE, two, three. ONE, two, three. ONE, two, three.”
“Bravo!” he exclaimed. “Well done, Julia.”
The sound of her name on his lips gave her such a warm feeling that Julia was able to reply, without any constraint in her voice, “Thank you, Kit. Now what next?”
“Now we must dance the two parts together. You put your hand on my shoulder, and I have my arm around your waist—like this.” And he came towards her, indicating that she should lift her right hand onto his shoulder, then he put his left hand round her waist, and with his other hand clasped her free hand.
The feeling of being so close to him made her feel—she could not have described it in words—there was a warmth, an excitement, a trembling feeling within her that she had never felt before. He said nothing, but he held her hand even more tightly, which made her sure that he felt the same.
After a little while, he cleared his throat and said, “Now, Julia, we must move together. That is, I mean, in the same direction.”
She realised that he was trying to make a joke, and to make some sense of how he was feeling as he began the tune again.
“Now, let us begin. ONE, two, three. ONE, two, three. ONE, two, three. ONE, two, three. ONE, two, three.”
After an unsteady start, they began to move together as one around the room, from the end by the tall windows to the other, where a tall mirror hung above the stone fireplace. Just occasionally, his slight limp impeded them. Julia could see them both in a reflection in the mirror, looking over Kit’s shoulder at their image as they turned and moved as one. She could not have said how long it was before they stopped, nor would she have cared if the ballroom had been full of people instead of just the two of them—the couple in the mirror.
At last they came to rest, but he did not release her. Instead, he gently took his right hand from her left and held her head against his shoulder.
“Julia,” he breathed, “we must, we have to, find a way to be together forever.”
She could think of nothing useful to say, nor wished to lift her head from his shoulder, storing the memory in her mind so that she might never lose it.
Finally he let her go from his embrace and held her at arms’ length, waiting until she could meet his eyes.
“Julia.” He stopped and could not go on, his voice thick with emotion.
She found the strength to speak. “Kit, we will, I am sure we will somehow. Please, please, don’t make me cry. I am so happy, and this can’t be the end of the story.”
For a moment, she thought that he was going to take her in his arms again. But after a short step towards her, he steadied himself and said, “No, I cannot risk it. I may not be able to control myself, and that is not what I want to happen tonight. Julia, we must go now to the bottom of the stairs, and say good night as we normally
