“Oh, Unice, I am sick at heart. I have ruined everything. Though indeed I had no intention — I did not even know …which was why, I believe. I shocked myself into a too precipitate declaration and — oh, the deuce, I wish I were dead!”
Unice tutted. She retrieved his coat from the floor and laid it on the back of a chair. Then, with an air of determination, she pulled out another chair for herself and sat, setting down the candle on the table between them. Laying her hand over Denzell’s, she squeezed it a little.
“Come now, it cannot be as bad as all that. You have had some sort of disagreement with Verena, I take it?”
“Disagreement!”
“Well, what then?”
“I kissed her.”
Unice sighed in relief. “Lord, Denzell, is that all?”
He looked round. “It is not all. And I could have done nothing more prejudicial to my chances.”
“Oh, fiddle. I dare say she may have been angry with you, but —”
“Oh, no, she was not angry. She was —” He stopped, sighing again. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know how to describe it. She responded to me at first. She melted like snow in a thaw. For a moment it was quite as if we belonged together, as if she loved me just as intensely as I love her.”
Unice sat up, clasping her hands together. “Then you do love her. Oh, Denzell, that is splendid!”
“Splendid, ha!” Denzell seized his glass, and tossed off the brandy, putting the vessel down with a snap. “Do you know what she said? After kissing me back with all the fervour I could wish, mark you, she said she could never love me, or anyone, and that I should take my love elsewhere for she would never accept it.”
“She said that?”
“And a great deal more besides. She even said she was sorry. Sorry!”
“But, Denzell, what is there in that to distress you so?” exclaimed Unice. “It is obvious she was denying her own feelings.”
Struck, Denzell gazed at her. Was it possible? “What makes you say so?”
“Consider a moment. Here is Verena, whom we know to be sorely troubled by some difficulty that concerns her mama. Has she shown any warmth towards any gentleman? No, she has not. Yet when you kiss her —”
“I only kissed her,” put in Denzell, on the defensive, “because I had that instant realised I had fallen in love with her. I told her so, too.”
“Even better. You declare yourself, and kiss her, and she responds favourably. I promise you, she could not have done so had she been indifferent. She must have struggled at once, and likely struck you into the bargain. She didn’t, did she?”
“Not with words,” agreed Denzell, reliving a little of the painful dismay he had experienced at Verena’s wholehearted rejection.
But Unice had not finished. “Denzell, you must forgive me for speaking so free, but think of this. Verena may be master of her emotions under normal circumstances, but I cannot suppose she can have had an opportunity to learn to controlthosesort of sensations.”
A glow of warmth drove away some of Denzell’s gloom. Even the memory of Verena in his arms had the power to move him. What if she, too, had been conscious of an equal strength of passion? He recalled how the cool, calm, and exquisitely polite Verena had vanished at his touch. A surge of hope rose in his chest.
“You mean her true feelings were in that kiss?”
“Which she afterwards denied,” agreed Unice. “Out of confusion, in all probability.”
The hope sank a little. Confusion, perhaps. But something more. Something so strong he doubted he had power to shift it, just as Verena had said. He could hear her voice now:I wear an iron shield.
“Not confusion, Unice,” he said, “but the bugbear that plagues her life. The thing that threw up this mask she wears. How the devil am I to find my way past that? I don’t even know what it may be.”
Unice sighed. “Would I could help you, but I cannot. She has not confided in me.”
A thought struck him, and he seized his hostess’s hand. “But she might, Unice. Especially now. If you were to go to her on my behalf, pleading my excuses and conveying my regrets — for she cannot realise but that you must be privy to my actions —”
“Yes, but will she then not believe I will pass on anything she says to you?” objected Unice.
“You will, in any event,” Denzell pointed out, “and I will not have her deceived. It may even be that she will feel safe enough to send a message by you in that manner.”
