“I seem doomed to make mistakes,” Tony said. “I bumped into Rose in London. I took her out for a meal. She seemed so pathetically grateful that I felt sorry for her. We both drank rather more than we should and we wound up in bed together. She was a virgin. A virgin at twenty-seven? Can you believe it?”

“And she wound up pregnant from that one night?”

Tony let out a large sigh. “Frankly I had forgotten all about her. It was just a spur-of-the-moment thing. It meant nothing. So you can imagine I got the shock of my life when she showed up on my doorstep a couple of months later and announced that she was pregnant. She was in a terrible state. She was going to lose her job when they found out. Her mother would never forgive her. She had nowhere to go.”

“So you did the right thing,” Belinda said.

“I did the right thing. I offered to marry her. She jumped at the chance. We were married right away in a registry office. And no sooner were we married than she had a miscarriage and lost the baby.”

“Tony—” Belinda said. “Are you sure she was really pregnant?”

“Well, yes. I mean, I never questioned. But what does it matter? I was stuck with her. With Rose. Boring old Rose. You’ve seen how out of place she is here. And of course everyone knows she was the cook’s daughter. She’ll never be accepted into local society.”

“She can learn if you are patient and help her, Tony,” Belinda said. “Look how well she did at cards tonight. She always was timid. She needs patience and encouragement.”

“The truth is that it’s all boring as hell down here. No friends. No social life and only Rose to come back to at night,” Tony said. “As for the sex—she just lies there, like a great beached whale under me. No passion. Nothing. Not like you. My God, we had a good time together, didn’t we?”

“We did.”

“So how about just once more, for old time’s sake?”

“Tony, if you think I’m going to bed with you in your own house with your wife just down the hall, you can think again. I’ve made my own mistakes in life and I do not intend to make any more. Now please go before I raise my voice and Mrs. Mannering appears.”

“Damn that woman,” he said. “She may keep the house running but I can’t stand the way she creeps around, spying on us. She’ll have to go.”

“And you’ll have to go too, I’m afraid. You are keeping me from my beauty sleep and if Rose comes up with her hot cocoa she’ll be mortally offended. She’ll probably blame me for luring you into my room.”