‘I hope it will be soon. And if she does not recover?’

‘Why then, both Jane and I will be in deep mourning. My sister is a remarkable woman.’

‘I understand this, of course. But are you saying that this mourning would mean the postponement of my wedding to Jane?’

‘And mine to Clorinda?’ said Sir William. ‘Not necessarily, for life must go on. But I advise you, if you are to keep and hold my daughter’s affection, you should understand the role that her aunt has played in her life and make all allowances for the love she feels for her.’

Not liking Sir William’s chiding tone, Ross merely repeated his hope that Emmeline Adeane would make a quick recovery and strode quickly away to his surgery.

Here, he sat down in his comfortable leather swivel-chair, took a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at his brow. He had twenty minutes before his first patient arrived. These twenty minutes appeared to him too slight a time in which to compose himself. His mind was so aflame with conflicted thoughts about Jane that he could only feel towards this hapless patient an animosity he knew to be entirely unreasonable. Throughout his career as a doctor, he had often had to master the skill of putting his own emotions aside in order to concentrate on the case in hand. But on this occasion, Jane’s abrupt departure for London appeared to him so thoughtless – or even spiteful – a thing that he felt quite undone by it.

He cursed her. He let himself wonder whether Jane had even used her aunt’s indisposition as an excuse to go to London for some other reason. Although she had seemed to suffer some pain when he’d first made love to her, there had been no blood on the sheets, thus indicating to him that she was not a virgin. Was it possible, then, that she had taken a lover during her long stay at Tite Street and, despite her promise to marry Ross, would brazenly continue to visit him?

Ross took the emerald ring from his pocket and threw it into a drawer of his desk. He wished, at this moment, to have Jane by his side, not to hold or to kiss her, but to hurt her. How, he asked himself, have I arrived at such a pass, where the only woman I can love – the one woman I cannot live without, who arouses me beyond all reason – treats me with such disdain? Am I just a toy to her, to be thrown down or cast aside whenever it suits her?

He knew that his desire to hurt her was unworthy yet asked himself whether many husbands did not, in fact, keep their wives obedient to their needs and commands by imprinting bruises on their white flesh, an excellent and eternal flowering, the mark of the male? And he let himself believe, then and there, that when Jane returned to his bed, he would treat her much more roughly than had been the case so far.