Dominic Lyall limped round the couch and without waiting for her to join him, seated himself in the armchair at the far side of the blazing fire. He poured himself some Scotch from the bottle on the tray beside his chair and then extracted a narrow cigar from a box on the bookcase nearby. He held a taper to the flames and lit his cigar with evident enjoyment, and Helen stood watching him from behind the couch wondering how he could behave so casually when he must know how she was feeling.

When his cigar was lit to his satisfaction, he put it between his teeth and felt in his pocket for her keys again. He examined them carefully, extracted two keys, and then tossed the others towards her. She was not quick enough to catch them and they fell on the floor at her feet. With a feeling of humiliation she bent to pick them up and saw that he had taken the car ignition key and the smaller key which opened the boot.

“Now,” he said, stretching his long legs out in front of him, “are you going to sit down?”

Helen pressed her lips together. “No,” she said unsteadily, “I’m going to my room. I shall just hope that by the morning you’ll have come to your senses.”

His smile held the mockery she had come to expect. “Don’t be too disappointed if I haven’t,” he commented, removing the cigar from his mouth.

“I – I think you’re despicable!”

“Your opinion of me isn’t important.” He watched her as she walked to the door. “And haven’t you ever heard that a war is fought on the stomachs of its troops? If you don’t have any supper, you’re going to be awfully hungry by the morning.”

Helen stiffened her shoulders. At least in this she could decide for herself. “I – I couldn’t touch your food!” she stated, anger strengthening her determination. “It would make me sick.”

Before she could make a dignified exit on those words of finality, the door opened and Bolt entered the room carrying a tray. She couldn’t see everything he was carrying, but the aroma of curry sauce was unmistakable and she observed a jug of cream that was intended to accompany a mouthwatering fruit pie that balanced on her side of the tray. The manservant looked at Helen in surprise, and then said:

“I thought I’d serve supper in here, sir, seeing that it’s such a wintry night.”

“A good idea,” said Dominic Lyall, smiling with rather more amusement than usual. “Will you join me, Bolt?”

Bolt glanced at Helen again. She was still hovering by the door, almost hypnotised by the smell of food. She was only beginning to realise how ravenously hungry she was, and she half regretted her impulsive rejection of his hospitality.

“But I thought – the young lady –” he began, but Dominic shook his head.

“Msis James – isn’t hungry, Bolt. She said something about feeling – sick?”

His eyes moved to Helen’s uncertain face and their hardness moved her to action.

“That’s right,” she declared, her lower lip quivering in spite of her determination that it should not. “I – I’m rather more particular who I eat with!” And she stalked out of the room, banging the door behind her.

She stood for a moment in the hall after the door had closed, half expecting him to come after her and take some retaliatory action. But all she heard was a burst of laughter which unmistakably issued from Dominic Lyall’s throat, and she realised that the second glass on the tray was used by Bolt …

HELEN’S bed was superbly comfortable, the hot water bottles reminding her of when she was a child and her mother used to tuck her up with a bedtime story. Only now there was no bedtime story, only the similarities between her plight and that of Beauty and the Beast …

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