He was still learning about Helen, and it was his daily pleasure to know her better and to love her more. But he was certain, as certain as he was of his own love, that Helen’s dazzled devotion to Oliver was long ago over. Their memories of him were a bond between them now, liking and love that had different faces but were still shared, and precious to them both.

The Mortimores were no threat, any more. If he had almost lost her to Darcy, with his title and all his acres and priceless possessions, then he had fought back for her in time.

Helen had chosen him, and she had turned her back on all that English magnificence to come here, to come back home, with him.

‘Are you happy?’ he whispered against her.

Her face when she looked at him told him more than anything she could have put into words.

‘You know I am.’

Tom reached up and pulled her down so that their mouths met.

When he spoke again his voice was light, and teasing. They knew that Follies, and everything that had happened there, would drift away at last into their shared history.

He smiled at her. ‘So, clever. What will you do now?’

‘Now? At once? What do you think?’

‘I meant after that.’

Slowly, as if the thought was just coming to her, she said, ‘I’d like to study some more. Does that sound very dull?’

‘No. It sounds just what you should be doing. And where better? American universities are the best in the world.’

‘You don’t have to tell me that. I’m already more New York than the New Yorkers, remember?’

He looked at her, a slender gipsy-like girl in the careful white space of his apartment. How empty it would be without her. He thought of the mid-town theatres, the dusty stages and cramped rehearsal rooms and the opulence of Greg Hart’s suite. His world, and where he wanted to be. But never without Helen.

He remembered how unquestioningly she had left the cool green and gold of Oxford to come here with him. She had embraced his home town open-heartedly.

‘Thank you,’ he said softly, ‘for coming here with me.’

‘It doesn’t matter where I am,’ she answered, ‘so long as it’s with you. But if I could choose …’ she hesitated, and saw the flash of determination in Tom’s face that they would go wherever it was she wanted, ‘… it would be right here.’

He pulled her close to him. ‘In that case, will you marry me? Now at once, without a ruby?’

‘Yes,’ she answered him. ‘Yes, I will.’

They turned away together, and above them, where the little sea picture hung the air still seemed full of the scent of flowers and the tough, salt, free tang of the sea.