Telling himself not to make too much of her acknowledgement of the part he’d played, Kane said, ‘You would never have found yourself in Harriet’s position. You are too strong, too principled.’
‘My mother did.’ She hadn’t meant to say it and yet she had been wanting to since she had returned from Sunderland. She felt differently about her mother now; she felt she understood Esther better after the talk with her uncle. She still couldn’t completely dispel the feeling of embarrassment, but now she knew her mother had wanted her, that she’d been prepared to give up her life on the stage for her, the hurt had gone.
Her eyes returned to Kane. Not for the world would she have admitted to herself that this was some kind of test, but she found she was holding her breath as she searched his craggy features. The cornflower-blue eyes held their normal warmth and no vestige of shock showed on his face. Quietly, he said, ‘Do you want to talk about it?’
Strangely, she didn’t. He had passed the first hurdle with flying colours, she didn’t want to say anything which might change that. Nevertheless, she nodded. ‘My grandfather was a vicar and my mother was brought up very strictly. She rebelled and ran away to come to London when she was fifteen years old. She wanted to go on the stage . . .’
She kept nothing back. She related the misery of her childhood, the time her aunt had beaten her half to death, which had been the catalyst for the change in her relationship with Patience and their going away to school, the revelation which had brought her following in her mother’s footsteps to the capital, even the last conversation she’d had with her uncle in the New Year.
She finished as they arrived at the restaurant. Kane had taken her hand part-way through the story but had listened without saying a word. Now he said, very softly, ‘I am glad your aunt and uncle are dead because I would have wanted to kill them with my bare hands for what they did to a sensitive little child. And when I called you remarkable just now, I didn’t know how remarkable.’
Sophy gulped in her throat, telling herself she couldn’t cry, not here, not now. His reaction was all she had wanted Toby’s to be. The doorman standing outside the restaurant saved her by walking to the kerb and opening the cab door.
The restaurant’s interior was the very latest thing and had already had personages such as Winston Churchill as its clientele, but Sophy was oblivious to her surroundings as she followed the waiter who led them to their table for two. She was drawing on all of her acting ability to maintain a pose of calm composure.
Kane ordered her favourite cocktail which she sipped as she studied the menu, and gradually her thudding heart returned to its normal beat. They ordered the food and a bottle of wine, and then Kane leaned forward. ‘I am honoured you have confided in me,’ he said gently, ‘and I will support you in all you want to do for Harriet. I know how easy it is for girls such as her to lose their way. May I tell you something now? Something I have not talked about with anyone else. It does not reflect well on me, I warn you.’
Sophy stared at him in surprise. She knew a little of his background, how he had lost his brothers and mother to the smallpox, and then his father’s death a few years later which had provided him with the wealth to forge the life he had built for himself. ‘I am sure nothing you could say could make me think any the less of you.’
‘Do not be too hasty.’ He smiled, but it didn’t crease the lines at the corners of his eyes and Sophy realised he was nervous.
As he began to talk, she became aware that she was hearing some of his own bitter truths – the pain of losing his brothers and mother in one fell swoop – his anger and feelings of rejection as his father took to the bottle – his dissolute youth and then the meeting with Ralph’s sister and its terrible outcome . . .
‘America was my salvation,’ Kane said soberly, ‘although I cursed it many times in those two years grubbing in the dirt under a blazing sun. But I got to know myself, the good and the bad. Maybe that’s what every man needs.’
‘And then you came back to England and invested your money in the theatres and travelling company.’ Sophy had been silent throughout, fascinated by this insight into a man who had the reputation of being a mystery.
‘Just so.’ This time Kane’s smile was real. She hadn’t been disgusted or repulsed by what he’d revealed, but then he should have known she wouldn’t be. Sophy understood the variables of human nature; he felt as though she had been born older than her years in that sense.