Read Online All My Sins Remembered by Rosie Thomas - Free Book Online

finger of guilt. ‘She was married earlier this year.’
    ‘You miss her,’ Nathaniel remarked, as if stating what was obvious.
    ‘Yes, I do.’
    ‘Are you very alike?’
    ‘We are identical.’
    Nathaniel’s thick eyebrows drew together. When he opened his mouth Eleanor saw the movement of his tongue and the elastic contraction of his lips. She had never been so sharply aware of anyone’s physical nearness, of the few inches of air and layers of cloth between them. She should have glanced away, but she let his eyes hold hers.
    ‘I don’t think so,’ Nathaniel said softly. ‘I believe you are unique.’
    Eleanor did look away, then. She turned deliberately to her neighbour on the other side, and began a conversation about architecture. She did not turn back until she was sure of herself, and when she did speak to Nathaniel again it was in an attempt to take control.
    ‘You haven’t told me who or what you are. It’s your turn to confess now.’ To her disgust Eleanor knew that she sounded arch rather than commanding. Nathaniel’s mouth twitched in the depths of his beard.
    ‘I am a teacher. I live in Oxford.’
    That was all. Lady Haugh was standing up. Eleanor rose and followed her. When they sat down in the drawing room with their coffee cups, Eleanor found herself on a sofa between Mary and her hostess.
    ‘What did you think of our friend Mr Hirsh?’ Frances Haugh asked her, ready to be amused.
    ‘I liked him,’ Eleanor said. She hadn’t learnt the Souls’ way of pretending to feel less, or more, or something different. ‘Who is he?’
    ‘He’s a friend of Philip’s. He is very clever; last year he was elected a Fellow of All Souls. He is a don, a linguist, I believe. Eccentric in the way that people of that sort often are. And he is Jewish, of course.’
    Eleanor had met plenty of Jews during her two Seasons. There were dozens of them in the new aristocracy. Many of them were rich, and most of them were good company. They were invited everywhere, and hostesses were pleased to welcome them whilst congratulating themselves at the same time on their own enlightened attitudes. Now that she thought about it, Eleanor realized that of course Nathaniel Hirsh was a Jew. And at the same time she knew that he was different from the bankers and financiers and manufacturers she had met in the London ballrooms. They were indistinguishable except by name from the old families.
    Nathaniel was distinguishable. Nathaniel was distinguishable from everyone else she had met in her life. She didn’t want to label him, Jewish or not, suitable or otherwise. He was, she understood, above that.
    When he came to claim her from between Mary and Frances, Eleanor went with him. Mary watched them go out into the garden, and then shrugged her pretty shoulders.
    ‘Whatever will Aunt Constance think?’ she wondered, and laughed faintly.
    Eleanor and Nathaniel walked the shady paths together. They could never remember afterwards what they talked about, only that there was a great deal to say. The sun moved and dipped behind the garden’s fringe of elms.
    When it was time for Nathaniel to leave, he took her hand. He lifted it to his mouth and held it there. The beard was soft on her skin, black against the whiteness.
    ‘May I call again tomorrow?’
    ‘I go back to Town tomorrow afternoon, with my cousin.’
    ‘I will call in the morning.’ Nathaniel said.
    Eleanor smiled at him, and he saw all the light of the day in her face.
    That evening, Eleanor sat down at the writing table in her bedroom and began a letter to Blanche. She had been intending to tell her sister everything; about how Nathaniel Hirsh had appeared in the garden at Fernhaugh and had immediately occupied the middle of her private landscape. He had made her see how bland the scenery was before he came. But then she thought of Blanche and John Leominster together, and of the tentative, sometimes puzzled way they seemed to defer to one another. She had never