'Put your dress on for me, I'm dying to see it.'
It was almost teatime, and Dominic had been gone for several hours. Christy and her mother were alone in the house, and dutifully Christy went into her own room and changed into her ballgown.
The look in her mother's eyes and the silence when she saw her brought a tiny thrill of pleasure to Christy's heart.
'Like it?' she teased.
'Oh, Christy, you look… fantastic…'
'There's a mask to go with it.' Christy demonstrated the white and silver disguise.
'It's lovely!'
Christy told her about how she had come by her outfit.
'What a wonderful idea! Is Meryl pleased about the baby?'
For the first time Christy was able to talk to her mother about Meryl and David's relationship without any constraint, knowing now that David was no longer attracted to her.
'Yes, I'm afraid there's always a penalty to be paid for marriage to that type of powerfully attractive man. Often, for all their intelligence, they can be like small children, fatally attracted to sticky but nutritionally useless sweets.'
Christy laughed at her mother's wry words.
'At least with your father I never had anything like that to worry about. Now Dominic's a very attractive and powerful man, but he has the strength and the resoluteness to avoid falling into that sort of trap. He doesn't have that sort of ego, for one thing, and for another, I suspect that he's a man who, once he loves, will stay faithful to that love through thick and thin.'
It was Christy's opening to warn her mother that she was cherishing misplaced hopes. Taking a deep breath, she said as lightly as she could, 'It sounds like Amanda's going to be a very fortunate woman, then.'
In the silence that followed she couldn't bring herself to look at her mother, and then the latter said softly, 'Oh, my dear… I'm so sorry. Are you sure?'
'Yes,' Christy told her shakily. She forced a tight smile to her mouth as she turned to face her mother.
'I know how much you love him, Christy,' Sarah Marsden told her quietly, 'and I had thought… that is, your father and I… ' she bit her lip. 'I'm more sorry than I can say, my dear. I thought this time… Now that you're both adults…'
Unable to bear listening to any more, Christy picked up the skirts of her dress and escaped into her own room. It was no use telling herself that it was stupid and, worse still, pointless for a grown woman of twenty-five to fling herself down on her bed and cry as though her heart was breaking for a man who would always be out of reach, but that was exactly what she did.
It was teatime before she had enough self-control to face the world again. Although she had bathed her face in cold water, her eyes remained suspiciously pink, but tactfully her mother said nothing about Dominic when she went back to ask her if she would like something to drink, instead chatting to Christy about her visit to London.
Two days later at a committee meeting of the fund-raising committee, Christy had a brief chance to speak to Dominic alone. The others had all left, and her father was standing outside the Vicarage talking to the Major.
'Dominic… about the Valentine's Night Ball. There's really no need to pick me up and bring me back. I'd really prefer…'
'What? To be escorted by your married lover?' His mouth twisted with what was becoming fam
iliar contempt. 'Why don't you ask him to do so, then, Christy, or are you afraid that he wouldn't leave his wife? Men like that rarely do, you know. The arrangement stands.'
Tense with frustration, Christy heard her father call out to her.
'You'd better go,' Dominic told her, opening the study door for her. She paused, torn between leaving and staying to argue with him, and then the phone rang.
As she hesitated he picked up the receiver, his voice deepening with pleasure, a smile curling his mouth as. he said warmly into the mouthpiece, 'Amanda! Of course I've missed you…'
Later Christy wasn't quite sure how she got to the car. She only knew that she was shaking almost violently with a mixture of rage and jealousy as her father drove them home.
A phone call from the Major towards the end of the week to check up on the final details for the Valentine's Night Ball took Christy over to his Queen Anne house set against the backdrop of fields and hills. The house had once belonged to the Anthony estate, and the Major's father had purchased it from them just after the First World War.
He lived alone in the attractive red-brick mansion, looked after by a daily cleaning lady from the village, and by his batman, who had left the Army at the same time as the Major. Christy had only been inside the house once or twice, but she had heard a lot about it from her parents, who had been there to dinner and to play bridge on several occasions, and so she was already prepared for the almost spartan neatness when the Major's batman opened the door for her.
A long time ago, when he had first left the Army, the Major's pernickety ways had caused comment among the villagers, but now they were so used to him that he no longer drew their awe. Indulgent amusement was probably a closer description of the locals' attitude towards the Army-like way in which the Major ran his farm and his home, and Christy almost expected him to ask her if she was ready to take 'tiffin' as he escorted her into his book-lined study.