As soon as they were alone again, Sophy said stiffly, ‘And Toby? I understand you and Ralph spoke to him the morning he returned. Can I know what was said?’
‘Of course.’ Kane was well aware of how she was feeling and not altogether surprised by her reaction to the news about Chide-Mulhearne. He had said to Ralph it might well be a case of shoot the messenger when he broke it to her, but that couldn’t be helped. He’d done his damnedest to see to it that the man was brought to justice, and he hoped Sophy would eventually come to see that. ‘I told him what would happen to him if he laid a finger on you again and suggested he removed himself from this house until such time as you saw fit to invite him back.’ He had also told Toby that certain acquaintances of Ralph would pay him a visit if he so much as came within a hundred yards of Sophy without her summoning him, but he had no intention of admitting this, or that one of these acquaintances had been to see Toby a few days later to remind him to behave himself.
Sophy nodded. ‘Thank you,’ she said tightly. She wanted to tell Kane that she had already made arrangements for her solicitor to call in a few days with a view to starting divorce proceedings, but somehow she couldn’t voice it. She also knew she was being uncharacteristically antagonistic and unfair, and she didn’t understand why, except that an echo of the woman’s voice she’d heard that morning in Kane’s house frequently came to mind when she was in his company. Kane wasn’t who she’d thought he was. No man seemed to be. And she didn’t know if she was on foot or horseback.
A week later, against the advice of her doctor, Sophy returned to work, much to the disappointment of her understudy. Her solicitor had personally gone to see Toby at his club but had reported back that Mr Shawe had been sullen and non-committal. Indeed, Mr Brownlow of Brownlow & Son had added, he was doubtful if the gentleman in question had understood what was happening, so withdrawn had he seemed, and when he had given him the necessary papers he had stared at them with the strangest expression on his face before tucking them into the inside pocket of his suit jacket.
Sophy had half-anticipated a visit from Toby, but one had not been forthcoming. Nevertheless, Sadie made sure the doors and windows to the house were always locked and bolted, and checked at least three times at night that everything was secure before going to bed.
Despite feeling so exhausted she could barely put one foot in front of the other at the end of each evening, Sophy was glad to be playing at the theatre again. When acting her part, for a brief time she was someone else, and the long speeches and complicated interaction with the male lead meant she had to put everything else out of her mind. She rose late every morning and after an early lunch of something light arrived at the theatre in good time for the afternoon performance, not leaving until the evening performance was over. This meant Kane’s daily visits had come to an abrupt end, for which she was thankful. As she had got better she had found he unsettled and disturbed her in a way she couldn’t describe, even to herself.
And so May gently led into June, with just one or two events registering from the world outside Sophy’s tiring routine. She attended the meeting presided over by Lord Lytton calling for a UK national theatre to be built by 1916 so as to commemorate the three-hundredth anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, rubbing shoulders with Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells and other influential celebrities, some of whom were remarkably self-effacing and others less so. And when France introduced a new law whereby automatic divorce was granted after three years’ legal separation, she took note, due to her own situation. On the whole, though, her life consisted of sleeping, eating and working at the theatre, an insular existence, and something she could never have imagined on the day she had got married. She had thought her life was set on a course of togetherness, encompassing children and family life, and now she found it had taken the opposite direction. But there was nothing she could do about it. It would be years before she was free of Toby. And the last decade had taken its toll. She had no wish to marry again, to come under the headship of a man, any man, after the misery she had suffered. It would be enough to be unrestricted by the bonds of matrimony, to be independent and footloose. With that she would be content.
Grieving for Cat was a daily process, that and coming to terms with the way her friend had died and that the man responsible had escaped justice. And so, when she heard about a Votes for Women rally being held in Hyde Park in the middle of June, she knew she had to go to represent Cat and her beliefs.