Page 127 of The Gathering Storm

‘In a few days. I hate to leave you, but the sooner I go, the sooner I’ll be back.’

‘How could we get married in a few days?’

‘Special licence. Register office.’

‘I should make sure of you, you mean, before you escape.’

He saw she was joking – at least partly. ‘Will that make you feel safer?’

‘No. Anyway, I want to be married in the chapel, properly, with everyone in floods of tears, and a wedding feast, and a Mrs Starling cake the size of a cartwheel, and oceans of champagne. I’m the Mistress of Morland Place. I want our wedding to be remembered for decades.’ She met his eyes. ‘So it will have to wait until you come back.’

He lifted her hand and kissed it. ‘That gives you three months to arrange it all. Will that be enough?’

Tears came suddenly. He took her into his arms and she cried into his collar. The dogs stood up, waving their tails anxiously, and Fand tried licking Polly’s hand, the only bare skin he could reach, in case that helped.

It was over quite quickly, and Polly pushed herself upright again. ‘Sorry about that. I’m not usually a spouter. Have you got a handkerchief?’ Fand pushed in again and licked her face. ‘Voilà, service!’ she laughed, pushing the dog away. ‘When you come back, then.’

‘When I come back. The whole shebang. No half-measures.’

‘And we’ll tell everyone before you go that we’re engaged.’

‘As soon as you like.’

‘But you still can’t be seen going in and out of my room. We’ll have to keep that part secret.’

‘From?’

‘Well, Ethel would be shocked. And Alec might be upset. And the servants—’

‘My dear love, in my admittedly limited experience of servants, they always know everything. I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts they’re already discussing in the servants’ hall how soon we’ll come clean.’

The next day he drove Polly into York and left her at Makepeace’s to conduct some business, saying he would stroll around and come back for her. And on the drive back to Morland Place, when they had left the road and turned onto the track, he stopped the car under a tree, switched off the engine, and produced a jeweller’s box, which proved to contain a very handsome engagement ring: a large sapphire surrounded by diamonds.

‘A sapphire to match your eyes – not that it comes close. Yours are more cornflower, but it was the best I could do. Polly Morland, will you marry me?’

‘Lennox Manning, I will,’ she said. He slipped the ring onto her finger, where it felt heavy and strange, but nice, and then they kissed. A blackbird was singing in the tree above them the whole time – she always remembered that.

That evening, they announced the engagement to everyone, and Barlow came back with the champagne at the right temperature suspiciously quickly, which tended to confirm Lennie’s thesis, that the servants always did know everything.