Rachel Trevellyan. Anne Mather

during that period, she grew to rely on him to a certain extent.

      By the time she was fully recovered, any thoughts she might have had of leaving him, of trying to get a divorce, had become distant and unreal, and she hardly needed his reminder that he still possessed her father’s promissory notes and would use them if she tried to thwart him.

      Instead, she started to paint again, drowning the inadequacies of her life in her art, creating pictures which occasionally brought her money. What small amounts she did earn this way proved sufficient to buy the personal necessities she needed without having to ask Malcolm for every penny, for he seemed to grow meaner as time went by.

      And then, just before Christmas last year, he had had a thrombosis. It had been a comparatively mild affair which had left him weakened but active. Although she urged him to take care, he seemed to imagine he was immune after recovering from the first attack so easily, but eventually, two months ago, he had had the second stroke, and it had paralysed him initially all down one side and made the movement of his legs impossible. With therapy, he had regained much of the use of his left hand and arm, but his legs remained helpless.

      In consequence, he had become totally unreasonable, demanding Rachel’s company at all hours of the day and night. Her occasional visits to the village for shopping or to see her friends were curtailed by the use of the telephone, and he became insanely jealous of anyone, male or female, who spent any time alone with her.

      Yet in spite of that, she had never even suspected that he might be planning to leave for Portugal.

      She knew of his correspondence with someone in Portugal, of course. From time to time he would give her a letter to post, and now and then there was a reply for him with a foreign postmark. But that was all. He had not troubled to explain to her his association with the Marquesa de Mendao, and certainly Rachel had known nothing of the fact that once Malcolm’s family had cared for the young girl who had grown up to marry the wealthy Portuguese nobleman.