Adamus had not put on sunglasses. He sat with his arm about her. The arm, its pressure, dislodged her reason. She wanted the car to stop. She wanted, as the strands of trees drew out, to be beneath him in the bare and leafless brown of a wood. She had never felt such things, only the vaguest intimations. Daydreams.

She longed to laugh at the stupidity of the driver, not knowing. Excluded.

It did not matter that they were going back to the house of the Scarabae. What could it matter? Nothing was important but to give in again to the onrush of his mouth.

The landscape ribboned past.

The journey was so long.

But they reached the house, or rather the road below, and when Adamus had paid the driver—no account was mentioned—they walked up the crumbling slope in the shadowed midday light, and came out among the wet green oaks, and the house appeared. And Rachaela sobered.

There were the roofs, the ranks of windows, the cone of the tower.

‘I’m here again,’ she said.

‘You agreed to it,’ he said. He did not attempt now to touch her.

‘Yes, I agreed.’

Her body was forgetting his. The warmth, the freezing and the vertigo of sudden want had drawn away. She observed them, anxious.

They reached the porch and the double door. Adamus used a key, something so ordinary.

They went into the chequered hall. It was silent and deserted. She seemed to see it too from far away.

‘Don’t go,’ she said.

‘You must be patient,’ he said, ‘and so must I. The one rule. Night-time.’

‘There are no rules. You told me.’

‘Yes.’

Ridiculous as a bride on her clichéd honeymoon, she must wait until the accepted hour. She did not credit this. This was some cruelty or other test of his.

‘I may change my mind.’

He stood looking at her, and she was drawn towards him, pulled by chains. She kept still by an effort.

‘Don’t,’ he said.

‘I find this silly and insulting.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I hate this house,’ she said.

‘No. Go up to the bolt hole of your pretty green-and-blue room. Go up and wait for me.’

‘You’re a tease,’ she said acidly.

He grinned at her. A boy’s grin, like the laughter. Did an elderly man grin and laugh like that still? Perhaps normally it was only hidden and distorted by the combered flesh, the yellowed eyes and teeth.

‘You want me so much now,’ he said. ‘I’m glad.’

‘It will pass,’ she said.

‘I hope not. Trust me. Tonight.’

She turned and walked away up the stairs, bemused. Here she was, back again.