I mention all this because I remember how the gathering storm sent us scurrying back indoors at half past ten o’clock, and while we did this, a few miles away, Harold Christie was finishing up a game of checkers with Sir Harry Oakes and a couple of dinner guests at Westbourne. But of course I didn’t know that fact, at the time. Of all that happened at Westbourne that night, I was blissfully unaware until later.

Thorpe and I scurried indoors, as I said, and closed the shutters against the spitting rain and the gusts of tropical wind. A flash of lightning illuminated the sky, and the crack of thunder followed swiftly. Thorpe asked me if I was afraid of storms, and I said I hated the damn things, you never knew what might happen in a storm.

We crawled between the sheets. Having made love twice already, marriage safely consummated, we felt no urgency. I stretched back and wiggled my toes, and Thorpe lay on his side against me and examined every inch of my figure while the rain beat noisily against the shutters and the tin roof. He spread his hand over my stomach, a gesture I loved for some reason. The sensation of that palm on my navel.

“Tell me something,” I said. “Why were you recalled to London?”

The room was dark and motionless, only the sway of the electric fan, while all hell slammed against the walls of our cottage. I kicked off the sheets from my legs.

“Well?” I urged.

“Can’t say.”

“Can’t you? Your own wife?”

“It isn’t a question of trust.”

“Isn’t it?” I said, and when there was no answer I went on in a loud whisper near his ear, so he could hear me over the storm. “You’ve put them in a bind, haven’t you. Those chaps of yours, back in London. You did your job too well. And now they know you know about the whole thing. You know the duke’s a traitor.”

Thorpe reached out and put his finger on my lips. I pushed his hand away and linked my fingers at the back of his neck.

“Let’s fly away. You can’t go back. They’ll never let you live with this knowledge in your head. Fly away with me.”

“No.”

“One of the Out Islands, maybe, or somewhere else. The other side of the world. Indochina, maybe. Have the Japs invaded there yet? Or Tasmania.”

“We can’t go to Tasmania, Lulu.”

“Just think. The two of us. I’ll make you happy, I swear it, we’ll have our own little world together, a little home, sunshine and babies and—”

“No,” he said.

“But—”