Her bed was canopied with green velvet embroidered with golden shields and crossed spears, seen on her coat-of-arms.
She called my attention to the pulls on the heavy drapes, each pull a carved ivory ball enclosing a ball inside another.
Hand in mine, she showed me her collection of silver, gold, and ivory fans, fans from Egypt, Greece and India, arranged on her walls, some open, some in cases, flabellum with bone handles, Venetian lace fans, tomb fans with gold-encrusted ribs, a Greek fan like an acanthus leaf. I can see the movement of her lips as she described them; I can see her hand, pointing.
We often walked around the lake and through the pollarded garden, its cypresses like stone columns: we walked the moors until Christmas cold sent us shivering to the big fireplaces where we talked and ate and sang and drank.
Someone kept the fire blazing in her fireplace and we would sink down on her bed or lie on the bear rug and make love, the firelight skirling her ivory, her fans and the canopy’s yellow silk lining.
Hugh opened our door one morning very early, while we were busy making love, and with a boisterous laugh he said:
“I just finished with my woman; when you’re done, we’ll go hunting. The horses are saddled. Better lock your door next time!”
Hugh—his huge body on a huge hunter—led us hunting along a loch, where the ocean, squeezed as in a glass case, shuddered, as though resentful of its trap, as though it considered everyone as intruder. I was awed by the water’s dark and the chasms menacing it. Deer eluded us and while we followed the loch, I lost interest in the hunt for the quarry of sea and earth, spirit and well-being.