Читать книгу The Complete Wideacre Trilogy: Wideacre, The Favoured Child, Meridon - Philippa Gregory - Страница 14

The following day I went to call on Celia. Mama chose to come too and she and Lady Havering closeted themselves in the parlour with wedding-dress patterns and tea and cakes while Celia and I were free to wander in the garden.

Havering Hall is a bigger house than Wideacre – built on a different scale as a great showpiece, while Wideacre has always been a manor house extended and improved, but firstly a beloved home. Havering is large, rebuilt in the last century in the baroque style, which was popular then, with plenty of stone garlands and statuary niches and swags of stone ribbons over the windows. If you like that sort of thing it is said to be a fine example. I think it fussy and overdone. I prefer the plain clean lines of my home with the windows set honest and straight in the sand-coloured walls and no fancy pillars blocking the sunlight from the front rooms.

The gardens were laid out at the same time and they show the neglect even worse than the house. The paths were planned with a ruler and compass to follow straight lines around square and rectangular flower beds leading one, like a bored pawn on a gravel and grass chessboard, to the square ornamental pond in the centre of the garden where the carp are supposed to fin among flowering water lilies, and the fountains play.

In practice, the pond is dried out because it sprang a leak and no one had the wit to find the hole and have it mended. The fountains never played well because of low water pressure, and when the pump broke they stopped for ever. The carp benefited the herons but no one else.

The ornamental flower beds may still preserve their soldier-straight rows of flowering plants and the centre crowns of roses, but it is hard to tell for the towering weeds. They are the friendly wild flowers of my Wideacre childhood – rosebay willowherb, gypsy’s lace, wild foxgloves. But they look like a sign of the end of the world in these formal gardens. The ladies of Havering – Celia’s mama, herself and her four stepsisters – can see no solution but to wander around the garden saying, ‘Dear, dear’ at the greenfly and the suckers and the crumbling flower-bed edges. A week’s hard work by two sensible men would reverse the decay, and anyone but a fool would set them to it. But the ladies of Havering prefer to endure, with sad acceptance, the rack and ruin of garden and, more seriously, of farmland.

‘It is a shame,’ Celia concurred. ‘But the house is worse. It is so gloomy with the furniture under dust sheets and bowls out to catch the drips of water when it rains. And in winter it is really very cold.’

I nodded. I could sympathize with Celia’s position as a stepdaughter from a previous marriage brought into a home both overpoweringly grand and unnecessarily uncomfortable. But for Celia our lands and our position were not just enviable for themselves – they were her refuge from the discomforts and humiliations of her home. With good management, a lot could have been done with the Havering estate; Harry and I expected a handsome profit from Celia’s dowry lands. After all, we shared the same good soil and easy weather. There was no God-given reason that Wideacre cattle should be twice the size of the Havering beasts, or that Wideacre fields should offer double the yield. Except, of course, for the crucial ingredient of the Master’s boot. Wideacre had never been neglected by an absentee landlord spending the profits faster than they grew.

Wideacre Hall might be plain and unfashionable. The rose garden might be modest and too like simple gardens of cottages and small farmhouses. But that was because when the land yielded a good golden profit, the money went back into the land, repairing buildings, fences and gates; buying time so fields could be rested between sowings; carting mulch from the stables to make the earth yield in greater and greater abundance. But Lord Havering cared nothing for the land except as a source of gambling money, and his wife and his daughters could live in a broken-down barn for all he cared as long as he had an income from his rack-rents to gamble away at White’s or Brooks’s in London.

‘You will be glad to get to Wideacre,’ I said sympathetically.

‘I will,’ she said. ‘Especially with you there, dearest Beatrice. And your mama too, of course.’

‘I am surprised, then, that you are going on a wedding tour,’ I said carefully. ‘Was it your idea?’

‘It was,’ she said dolefully. ‘It was. Oh, Beatrice!’ She glanced guiltily back at the house as if her mama’s stern face was looking out of the windows, or as if her four stepsisters might at any moment creep out and eavesdrop. Abruptly she guided us into an overgrown arbour and sat down. I sat down beside her and put a sisterly arm around her.

‘It was my idea when Harry was so sweet and gentle,’ she said. ‘I thought we would go to Paris and Rome and hear the lovely concerts, and make visits and things …’ Her voice tailed off. ‘But now when I think of marriage and the things one has to do, I wish I had never suggested it! Just think of being quite alone for weeks!’ My body melted at the very thought of being alone with Harry for weeks, but I kept a proper face of sisterly concern.

‘If only your mama could come with us,’ Celia said wildly. ‘Or Beatrice … or … or … or you!’

I was genuinely surprised.

‘Me?’ I said. I had thought only of stopping the tour but this was a new development.

‘Yes,’ she said quickly. ‘You can come and keep me company while Harry is visiting his farms and lectures, and then when I am sketching you can keep Harry company in Rome.’

The idea of keeping Harry company in Rome made my head spin with imagined pleasure.

‘Oh, Beatrice, say you will!’ she said quickly. ‘It is quite customary. Last year Lady Alverstoke took her sister on her wedding tour, and Sarah Vere did so too. Beatrice, do come with us as a favour to me. Your company would make all the difference in the world to me, and I’m sure Harry would like it too. We could all have such fun.’

‘We could,’ I said slowly. In my mind’s eye were hot, sunlit afternoons with Celia sketching with her maid, or making calls, while Harry and I lay luxuriously together in the sunlight. Or in the evening while Celia attended a concert, Harry and I in a little discreet house dining together, and then retiring to a private room with a bottle of champagne. Of the long, sensuous hours while Celia was fitted with Paris clothes, of the snatched moments while Celia wrote letters to her mama. Of daily rides together in foreign scenes, of little secret places we would find to hide and embrace.

‘Promise you will come!’ Celia said desperately. ‘It is yet another favour I ask of you, I know. But promise me you will!’

I took her fingers that trembled so pitifully in a comforting sisterly grasp.

‘I promise I will come,’ I said reassuringly. ‘As a special favour to you, dear Celia, I will come.’

She held my hand as a drowning man might clutch at a branch. And I let her cling to me. Celia’s hero worship of me might be tedious, but it gave me a strong hold on her and on Harry through her. We were sitting, hand-clasped, when her stepbrother George came running out to find us.

‘Good afternoon, Miss Lacey,’ he said, blushing the rosy red of a coltish fourteen-year-old boy. ‘Mama sent me to find you to tell you that your mama is ready to leave.’

Celia fluttered ahead of us up the weed-strewn path to the house while George offered me his arm with elaborate courtesy.

‘They have been talking about the bread riots,’ he said with an awkward attempt at conversation with the lovely Miss Beatrice, the toast of the county.

‘Oh, yes,’ I said with polite interest. ‘Bread riots where?’

‘In Portsmouth, Mama said, I think,’ he said vaguely. ‘Apparently a mob broke into two bakers’ claiming the bread was made with adulterated flour. They were led by a legless gypsy on horseback. Fancy that!’

‘Fancy,’ I repeated slowly, uneasy with a feeling of dread I could not properly understand.

‘Fancy a mob being led by a man on a horse,’ George said with youthful scorn. ‘Why, next they’ll be looting with a curricle and pair.’

‘When was this?’ I asked sharply, some premonition drawing a cold fingernail down my spine.

‘I don’t know,’ said George. ‘Some weeks ago, I think. They’ve probably all been caught by now. I say, Miss Lacey, will you dance at Celia’s wedding?’

I found a smile to meet his open admiration. ‘No, George,’ I said kindly. ‘I shan’t be fully out of mourning. But when I am, at the first party I shall dance with you.’

He coloured up to his ears and escorted me up the steps to the Hall in breathless silence. Mama and Lady Havering were not speaking of the Portsmouth bread riots when we entered the drawing room, and there was no opportunity to ask more about it. It remained a faint shadow on my mind, like the cold shiver that country people say is someone walking over your grave. I did not like to hear of angry men on horses, of legless men leading mobs. But I could hardly have said why.

In any case, the most pressing problem before me was to seize my God-given chance to join the wedding tour. Some wise instinct made me delay telling Harry that his bride had asked me along for company until we were at tea: Mama, Harry and myself. I wanted to make sure that Harry could not refuse me as a lover what he could be forced to grant me as a brother.

I stressed that it was Celia’s invitation to me, and said that I had told her I could give her no answer without mama’s consent. I watched Harry’s face carefully and saw the brief leap of anticipation and pleasure at the news, succeeded by the more permanent expression of doubt. Harry’s good conscience had the upper hand again and I realized, with a pang of jealousy and pain, that he was looking forward to being alone with Celia, far away from her overbearing mother, far away from his stultifying, smothering, loving mama. Far away, even, from his desirable, mysterious sister.

‘It would be a marvellous opportunity for you,’ Mama said, glancing towards Harry to guess what her darling boy would prefer. ‘And so like Celia to think of giving you pleasure. But perhaps Harry feels he needs you here while he is away? There is always a lot of work to do on the land in autumn, I know your papa used to say so.’

She turned to Harry, having prepared the ground so he could merely indicate his wishes and we would all rush to satisfy them. Everything in this house went to Harry. I curbed my impatience.

‘Celia was actually begging me to come,’ I said, a smile on my face. I looked directly at Harry down the walnut table. ‘She rather dreads, I think, being left in a strange town while Harry seeks out some experimental farmer.’ My eyes held his and I knew he would read my secret message. ‘She does not yet share your tastes, as I do.’

He knew what I meant. Mama glanced curiously from his face to mine.

‘Celia has many years ahead of her to learn to share Harry’s tastes,’ she said gently. ‘I am sure she will do her very best to please him and make him happy.’

‘Oh, yes,’ I said in ready agreement. ‘I am sure she will make us all happy. She is such a sweet good girl; she will be a marvellous wife.’

The thought of a lifetime with a ‘marvellous wife’ cast a shadow over Harry’s face. I took a gamble on Mama’s innocence and rose from my seat and walked to the head of the table. To Mama’s view from the foot I was prettily coaxing my dear brother, but he and I knew as I came near him the speed of his pulse was raised and, at my touch and at the smell of my warm perfumed skin, his breathing became faster. I kept my back to Mama and put my cheek against his face. I felt his skin grow hot under mine and I knew that my touch, the glimpse of my breasts at the top of my gown, were winning the battle for me against Harry’s weathercock feelings. There was never any need to argue with Harry. He was lost at the first reminder of pleasure.

‘Do take me with you, Harry,’ I pleaded, in a low coaxing tone. ‘I promise I will be good.’ Hidden from our mother, I breathed a kiss high on his cheek near his ear. He could stand no more and gently pushed me from him. I saw the muscles around his eyes were tense with self-control.

‘Of course, Beatrice,’ he said courteously. ‘If that is what Celia desires, I can think of no more agreeable arrangement. I shall write her a note and join you and Mama in the parlour for tea.’

He got himself quickly out of the room to cool off and left me alone with Mama. She was peeling a peach and did not look at me. I slipped back into my seat and cut a few grapes from the fat cluster with a pair of delicate silver scissors.

‘Are you sure you should go?’ Mama asked evenly. She kept her eyes on her neat hands.

‘Why not?’ I asked idly. But my nerves were alert.

She groped for a good reason and could not answer me at once.

‘Are you anxious at being left alone?’ I asked. ‘We shall not be gone very long.’

‘I do think it would be easier if you stayed,’ she concurred. ‘But I dare say I can manage for six or eight weeks. It is not Wideacre …’ She let the sentence hang, and I did not help her to complete it.

‘Perhaps they need time to be alone together …’ she started tentatively.

‘Whatever for?’ I said coolly, gambling on her belief in my virginal innocence. Gambling also on her own experience of marriage, which had not included courtship as a preliminary, nor a honeymoon as an introduction, but had been a business arrangement contracted for profit and concluded without emotion, except mutual dislike.

‘Perhaps you and Harry would do well to be apart …’ she said, even more hesitantly.

‘Mama,’ I said challengingly with my brave courage high. ‘Whatever are you saying?’

Her head jerked up at the strength in my voice and her pale eyes looked half frightened.

‘Nothing,’ she said, almost whispering. ‘Nothing, child. Nothing. It is just that sometimes I am so afraid for you – for your extreme passions. First you adored your father to such a height of feeling, and then you transferred that affection to Harry. All the time you will do nothing but roam around Wideacre as if you were a ghost haunting the place. It frightens me to see you so obsessed with Wideacre, so constantly with Harry. I just want you to have a normal, ordinary girlhood.’

I hesitated. ‘My girlhood is normal and ordinary, Mama,’ I said mildly. ‘It is not like yours because times are changing. But even more so because you were reared in town whereas I have had a country childhood. But I am no different from girls of my own age.’

She remained uneasy, but she would never have the courage to look into the pictures she had of Harry and me, to see clearly what was taking place before her frightened half-shut eyes.

‘I dare say you are not …’ she said. ‘I cannot judge. We see so few young people. Your papa had little time for county society and we live so withdrawn … I can hardly judge.’

‘Don’t be distressed, Mama,’ I said soothingly, my voice warm with assumed affection. ‘I am not obsessed with Wideacre, for, see, I am leaving in mid-autumn, one of the loveliest seasons. I am not possessive of Harry for I am happy at his marriage and I am making close friends with Celia. There is nothing to fear.’

Mama had neither wits sharp enough nor instincts true enough to filter truth from lies. In any case, if the truth of my relationship with Harry had stared her in the face she would have died rather than see it. So she swallowed her last slice of peach and gave me an apologetic smile.

‘I am foolish to worry so,’ she said. ‘But I do feel the responsibility of you and Harry heavily on me. Without your papa you two have only me to guide you and I am anxious that ours shall be a truly happy home.’

‘Indeed it is,’ I said firmly. ‘And when Celia lives here with us all it will be even happier.’

Mama rose to her feet and we walked together to the door. I opened it for her in a pretty gesture of courtesy and she paused to give me a gentle kiss on the cheek.

‘God bless you, my dear, and keep you safe,’ she said tenderly, and I knew she was reproaching herself for her lack of warmth towards me, and for the unease she felt when she saw me with my arms around my brother’s neck.

‘Thank you, Mama,’ I said, and the gratitude in my voice was not assumed. I was truly moved by her attempt to do her duty by me, and to love me into the bargain. She had hurt me, and her preference for Harry turned my heart to ice towards her. But I could recognize her honest, honourable attempt to care for Harry and me equally.

‘I’ll order tea,’ she said and left the room.

She left me beside the dining table, turning over a conflict of feelings. If only life was as my mama perceived it, how simple it would be. If Harry and I had an easy, sinless working partnership, if Harry’s marriage was a real one of love, if my future could be a happy one in a new home with a loving husband – how easy it would be to live without sin. Then the door opened and Harry came in, his letter to Celia half finished in his hand.

‘Beatrice,’ he murmured. We faced each other at the foot of the polished table, our faces reflected in the dark wood. He had the face of an angel, and the shadowy reflection only made his clear-cut features more luminous. As I glanced down at the table I saw my own face, pale as a ghost with my white powdered hair piled on my head, regal as a queen. But my eyes were large and serious, and my mouth was sad. We appeared what we were: a weak boy and a proud and passionate young woman. But for that moment we could have halted the process we had, half consciously, started. I was filled with a sense of peace at my mother’s gentle blessing, at her humility and at her own confused quest for proper behaviour in a world where sin was in every corner of her house, half sensed, half understood, but secretly threatening. Watching her struggle to find the courage to confront the truth, her struggle to love me, I saw the pattern of another sort of life, one where people might choose renunciation rather than grabbing for pleasure. Where one might count the cost in moral terms, and decide it was too high. Where one might search for goodness rather than gratification.

But the vision was a brief one.

‘I’ll come to your room tonight,’ said Harry urgently. Then he paused and glanced curiously at my face. ‘You do wish it?’

I hesitated. The refusal was on my lips and I believe that the first refusal would have been the hardest. Then perhaps we could have left those two evil days behind us. But then I caught sight of the letter to Celia. The page was open and I could see the first words written in Harry’s boyish hand. ‘My good angel,’ it said. He called her his good angel even when he was hot with desire for me. And she would come into our house – my house – and be the angel of Wideacre while I would be married off and banished.

Not only Harry but Celia, Mama and I were all trapped in the roles we had to play. A second’s hesitation from me and Celia would win Harry and Wideacre for ever, as surely as if she had plotted and schemed against me. She could take Wideacre from me without exertion, as a tribute to her sweetness and kindness. While I could hold it only by striving and planning and struggling. She was his good angel, and I, in the battle for ownership, was forced to be Lucifer.

I shrugged. My passion for Wideacre had brought me this far. It might take me further yet. In any case, it was not in my nature to say no to Harry when he stood there with a love letter to my rival in his hand, and his eyes dark with desire for me.

I walked through the doorway and let my body brush briefly against him as I passed. ‘At midnight,’ I said. ‘Come to my room.’

I heard a sigh, almost like a growl, as my hair touched his cheek and then he followed me like an obedient puppy to the brightly lit parlour, to the cheerful fire, and to Mama with her loving smile for both of us, her good children.

That night I lay in Harry’s arms and let him love me as if we could hold back the morning. My willingness and passion excited him and kept him from sleep for hour after heady hour. And after he had loved me we dozed and then woke, and loved again. He did not creep back to his own chill bedroom until the first notes of the chorus of summer birdsong were starting in the rose garden, and when I could hear, muffled by the servants’ door, the clatter of water jugs and milk pails and the kitchen fire being lit.

When I was alone in my narrow bed I did not sleep but propped myself up on the pillows to look out over the garden. I felt physically sated, even physically exhausted, for we had kissed and rolled and embraced and loved all night. But I did not feel the deep calmness that I used to feel after as little as ten minutes with Ralph. Harry might fill me with desire, he might give me hours of pleasure, but he never left me at peace. With Harry I always had a lingering sense that I had to stay alert. With Ralph, the gypsy’s son, I had been a sensual equal. But Harry owned the land, and I could never sleep easy beside him.

Now my plans seemed to have brought me to some secure harbour. The wedding would go ahead and both bride and groom counted on me as their main friend and ally. With them using me as confidante and messenger, I would be able to keep them estranged for ever. The only danger to my future I could foresee was the possibility of Harry having a son and heir. I could tolerate sharing the estate with Harry, but I could not have borne the sight of Celia’s brat growing up on my land. While Harry fecklessly passed over to me all the management and power on the estate I could feel myself a joint owner, but once he had a son he would start planning for the future on his account – and I could not have borne that.

But it seemed so unlikely. Celia, who already trembled and turned pale at the very thought of the nightmare of marital duties, seemed unlikely to be a lusty breeder. I could not imagine them making love more than a few token occasions. I could not imagine Celia conceiving easily, like healthy peasant stock.

And I was not now jealous of Celia. I should not mind when she preceded me into the drawing room and into dinner as, following the conventions, I stepped back for her and then for Mama. I should not mind because I would know, and everyone would know, who was the true power on Wideacre. Ours is a small county and everyone knows everyone else’s business. All our workers had long acknowledged me as the real force on the estate and all our tenants habitually consulted me first. While Harry had spent much time at Havering Hall this spring I had ordered fences to be repaired, entire cottages to be rebuilt, without his even noticing. The whole county knew that I ruled.

It would not take them long to realize that I would not release my control over the house to the new bride either. I controlled the purse strings at Wideacre and cook, butler and chief groom all brought their monthly accounts to me. There would be no extra expenditure made in the house or stables which was not first agreed by Miss Beatrice. If Celia tried to do so much as plan a dinner party without my knowledge she would find the cook apologetic, but reluctant. The wine could not be brought from the cellar, the lamb could not be butchered on the Home Farm without Miss Beatrice’s say-so. Celia would discover – if she did not guess already – that her role in the household would be a very limited one.

What she might do, with my blessing, was to take from me the tedious time-wasting business of ladies’ social calls and tea parties. No work on the land was so urgent that I could escape my duty as the daughter of the house to accompany Mama on one of these ‘treats’ at least once a week. We were ‘at home’ to callers every Wednesday afternoon, and my week seemed punctuated by those dreary afternoons when, dressed in silk or velvet, depending on the season, I sat behind the tea urn and poured tea and smiled and talked of the weather or the new play at Chichester, or the vicar’s sermon, or a pending marriage.

Every Wednesday was overshadowed by the prospect of an afternoon that made my idle legs ache with boredom, as if I had the ague.

‘Sit down, Beatrice, you are so restless,’ Mama would say to me when the last nodding bonnet had driven away down the drive.

‘I am stiff with sitting, I am aching with sitting,’ I would reply desperately. And she would sigh, and look at me with irritated incomprehension. And I would throw on a shawl and walk until I was under the cover of the wood, and then I would lift my skirts and pelt along the woodland paths until the blood was back in my cheeks and the clean air back in my lungs and my legs no longer felt like lead. Then I would saunter home, my bonnet swinging on its ribbons in my hand, my head tipped back to watch the interlaced branches over my head, and my ears rinsed clean of the chatter and full of birdsong.

Celia could have Wednesday afternoons with my blessing. She could have Sunday afternoons, too. After we had attended Matins and eaten a substantial Sunday dinner, it was Harry’s privilege to go to the library and supposedly read serious books – actually he used to put his feet up on the desk and doze in his chair, while in the parlour I sat ramrod-backed in a straight chair and read to Mama from a book of sermons. Celia could have the sermons, and much good might they do her.

All I cared for in county social life were impromptu occasions which happened when there were enough young people to roll back the rugs, and beg an aunt or an indulgent mother to let them dance. I liked the assemblies at Chichester we attended when lambing was done and the roads became easier. And I loved the easy male camaraderie out hunting, and the dances after dinner in winter. But outside those times, when my feet would tap and I would dance with anyone, anyone at all, for the sheer pleasure of swirling round the room, I could do without a social life. I followed my papa. My home was all I needed, and Wideacre could be represented by quiet, pretty little Celia at every county tea party from now till Doomsday with my blessing.

I should have been less easy at the promotion Celia would gain on marriage if I had not seen, without vanity but with clear eyes, that I was far the prettier. Celia was a lovely girl, brown eyes as soft as pansies, skin like cream. But set beside me she became invisible. That summer I glowed with beauty and sensuality. I never walked down a Chichester street but I felt people watching me – women as well as men – and watching me with pleasure in my easy swift stride, in the way my copper hair caught the light in its dancing, wavy ripple, and in my bright face and easy laugh.

If I had lived the life my mama wanted, I should have been as proud as any silly peacock in a dry aviary, for I should have had nothing to think about but how I looked and what colours best became me. But leading the life I had chosen, it mattered less to me whether my hair was right or my eyes bright or my skin clear than whether I could keep a gang of reapers in line. And I prized my eyes less for their clear lovely greenness, and more because one hard look from them could have a lazy ploughboy turned around and speeded up in one second.

But I should have been a saint in heaven if I had not watched Celia narrowly, for she was my rival. And I should have been an angel indeed if I had not looked forward to her wedding day when I was to stand beside her as bride’s attendant, at a time when we would be side by side and I would shine her down.

I would look well in the grey silk Celia had chosen. My hair would be piled high except for one negligent curl, which would trail over my bare shoulder. It would be powdered with white, white powder, which set off the bright green of my eyes and the warm living tints of my skin. The cross old dressmaker, brought from London to Havering Hall for the final fittings, actually gasped when I came out of Celia’s dressing room to stand before the glass in the dress.

‘Miss Lacey, you will be the loveliest lady there,’ she said.

I gazed at the pier glass in Celia’s bedroom. The gown was watered silk, catching the light as I moved, yet as dully smooth as pewter. You could not look at it and not want to touch me. It clung to me – and as I was mother-naked underneath every movement I made let the rich fabric shout, ‘Look! Look! Look!’ I really was very, very lovely. And I was glad to be so lovely.

The grey stomacher was embroidered with tiny seed pearls and tied so tight that I could scarcely breathe. Its pressure on my breasts made them flat so they overflowed in two warm curves at the low neck line. The silk overskirt parted to show the underskirt, which was not of the usual thick quilt. I had deliberately chosen a silk of fine light weaving and I could feel its smooth, satiny texture against my bare legs as I walked.

But my complacent smile was wiped off my face as the door to the closet at the side of Celia’s bedroom opened and she came out to stand beside me at the pier glass. In her wedding dress of white silk with a silver thread of pattern, she looked like a fairy-tale princess. No man could look at me and not feel hot desire. But no man or woman could look at Celia and not love her. Her waist, as slim as my own, was enhanced by the pointed triangle of the stomacher, and her slim back was hinted by the straight fall of silk at the back of the gown that swayed, tantalizingly, when she moved. Her soft brown hair was piled above her face. She had not powdered it today, but I could imagine that when she was powdered and curled she would set any man’s heart racing, not only with desire, but with tenderness, too.

She smiled in unaffected pleasure at the sight of me and said generously, ‘Why, Beatrice! You look lovelier than ever. You should be the bride, not me!’

I smiled back, but wondered if she was right, and which of us – with a free choice – Harry would prefer.

‘Is anything the matter, Beatrice?’ she said, turning to me. ‘What are you thinking about to make you look so grave?’

‘I was thinking about your husband-to-be,’ I said, hoping to wipe the happiness from her face. I succeeded better than I meant. Her very heart seemed to stop and her face blanched.

‘You can go, Miss Hokey,’ she said to the dressmaker, and then sank down into the window seat, disregarding the fine silk of the dress, crushing it and creasing it under her twisting hands.

‘Can you come on the wedding tour?’ she asked, her brown eyes wide with fright. ‘He wrote me a note to thank me for asking you but it was not clear if you could come, or no. Can you, Beatrice? For the more I think about it, the more certain I am I cannot face going away with him alone.’

‘I can,’ I said triumphantly and watched her face light up.

‘Oh! What a relief!’ she exclaimed and she turned her face and leaned her forehead against the cool of the window pane. She heaved a shuddery sigh but I saw her face was still strained.

‘Is there something more troubling you, Celia?’

‘It is wrong of me, I know,’ she said. ‘But it is the thought of the … bridal night. The plans are that we drive from the wedding breakfast to the Golden Fleece at Portsmouth, you know, and take a boat to France the following morning. I cannot bear the thought …’ She paused and I could see the play of anxiety on her young face. ‘If I should be hurt,’ she said softly, ‘or very much afraid, I should prefer it not to be in a small hotel, especially in England and especially so near home.’

I nodded. This might be meaningless to me. To me it was nonsense, of course, and all to my good. But I can recognize delicacy when I see it.

‘You are thinking that if someone gossiped then people might say things about you,’ I said understandingly.

‘Oh, no!’ she said surprisingly. ‘Not about me, but Harry. I should not like him to be distressed by gossip, especially if it was because of my foolish inability to …’ – she gasped – ‘… behave as I must.’

She really was a little darling! To be in such fear and yet think first of us. And it was good to know that the future Lady of Wideacre had a keen appreciation of our good name.

‘I am sure Harry would excuse you the first night,’ I said, and thought gleefully that his first night as a married man should be spent where most of his married life would be spent – with me. ‘With the journey to Portsmouth and then France, perhaps we should agree to travel as friends until we are comfortably installed in Paris.’

Her eyes looked down and she nodded. In that assent she gave me another foothold in Harry’s life. I smiled encouragingly at her and hugged her. Her waist was slim and pliant and I felt the warmth of her body through the gown. She turned her sad face to me and leaned her cheek against mine.

I felt the soft smooth skin just damp with the trace of a tear and could not avoid the thought that if she ever turned to Harry like this then all my passion and power would not hold him. Her lovely virginal body would be a potent attraction to a man like Harry, and her youth, her trust and her sensitivity would create in him the birth of a gentle and tender love. I gave her a little kiss on the lips and – coming as I did from Harry’s hungry bites – she was soft and sweet. Then I got to my feet and slipped out of my bridesmaid gown and into my grey riding habit.

Lady Havering tapped at the door and came in as I was arranging my curls before Celia’s mirror.

‘Good gracious, Celia, get out of that gown immediately,’ she said in her firm oice. ‘You will crush it and spoil it sitting around like that.’ Celia dived for her closet. ‘I suppose you girls have been dreaming of your trip,’ said Lady Havering to me.

I smiled and bobbed her a decorous curtsy.

‘It is so kind of Celia to invite me, and I’m so happy that Mama can spare me.’

Lady Havering nodded. She was an imposing woman, well fitted to her leading position in our county. Large-boned, well-made, she had a presence that totally overwhelmed her pretty daughter and everyone else, too. She settled into a chair and inspected me with the frank appraisal of a woman of the Quality in her own house. How she had fitted into the little Bath town house with her invalid first husband I could not imagine. Lord Havering had recognized in the rich widow someone who would overlook the poverty of his position for the pride, and who would never let down appearances however badly she was treated. He had chosen well; Lady Havering had done her duty, cared for the children of his first marriage and added to the nursery on her own account. She ran the Hall as well as she could for a woman who now had no money and no love for the land, and made no complaint either of her lord’s frequent absences in London, nor at his frequent arrivals with a bunch of drunken friends who would roam about shooting pheasants, and riding down the corn.

‘I see your mama lets you ride alone,’ Lady Havering said abruptly. I glanced at my grey habit. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I suppose I should have stayed inside the estate but I wanted to see Celia and I didn’t think anyone would see me.’

‘Lax,’ said her ladyship, without meaning offence. ‘But then you’ve always been allowed a lot of freedom for a young girl. In my young days no young lady would have ridden any distance, not even with her groom or her brother.’

So they knew at Havering Hall of my rides with Harry. I smiled neutrally and made no reply.

‘You’ll have to mend your ways when you come out,’ she said. ‘If you go to London you won’t be able to range around town on one of Harry’s hunters.’

‘No,’ I smiled. ‘But I believe Mama has no plans to take me to London.’

‘We might take you,’ she said generously. ‘If we open Havering House next season for Celia and Harry you could come along and be presented at Court. I will speak to your mama.’

I smiled and thanked her. It would take more than the promise of an opportunity to curtsy to the King to get me off Wideacre, but next season was far away. I might have my moments of vanity but I never lost my senses so totally as to prefer the larger audience of London when I could stay at home. The ripple of admiration when I entered one of the Chichester Assembly Rooms was the most extreme flattery I had ever had, and I was not such a fool as to want more.

‘Shocking news of those bread riots in Kent,’ said Lady Havering, conversationally.

‘I haven’t heard any news,’ I said, suddenly alert. ‘What has been happening?’

‘I had a letter from a friend at Tunbridge Wells,’ said her ladyship. ‘There has been a riot and even some rick-burning. There was even talk of calling out the militia, but the Justices of the Peace arrested a few of the worst offenders.’

‘Surely it’s just the same as always,’ I said. ‘The harvest will not be a very good one this year. The price is going up already. The poor go hungry and a few bad ’uns get up a crowd and riot until some landlord comes to his senses and sells them cheap corn. It happens nearly every bad year.’

‘No, this sounds worse than usual,’ she said. ‘I know one must expect insolence from the workers every time they have to do without, but this seems almost to have been a planned insurrection! Most dreadful! Let me see if I can find her letter.’

She felt in her pocket and I prepared myself for the twitterings of an old lady, scared half to death at the fanciful report of distant events. But as she started reading I listened more intently, with a seed of cold fear growing inside me.

‘“Dear …’ hmm, hmm, hmm, yes, here we are. “I hope your county is quiet for we have heard of the most dreadful events not twenty miles from Tunbridge Wells itself. I blame the Justices who have been so slack in punishing the disaffected in the past that the rabble think they have a licence to take whatever they want.

‘“A certain Mr Wooler, a good honest tradesman, had secured a contract to send all his neighbour’s corn to the London merchants, instead of having it ground locally, as is the custom. To further secure a return for his investment, he arranged that many other gentlemen in the neighbourhood should send their corn too in his wagons to London; a sensible and businesslike arrangement.”’

I nodded. I understood perfectly. Mr Wooler had created a selling ring with his neighbours and they had secured a usurious price for their corn and were sending the harvest of the entire area out of the county, away from the local market to London. Mr Wooler would show a handsome profit. So would his neighbours. But his tenants and the poorer workers would have no locally grown, locally ground corn to buy. They would have to travel to the nearest market to get their corn and their demand would push the price sky high to the further advantage and profit of the landlords, the Mr Woolers of this unjust world. Those people who could not afford the inflated prices would have to do without. And those who could not fall back on a diet of potatoes, or on the charity of neighbours, would starve.

Lady Havering went on, ‘“Mr Wooler anticipated some problems with the rowdy element in the village, and took the precaution of protecting his wagons during their trip to London with five strong men riding alongside equipped with both firearms and cudgels.”’

Mr Wooler seemed to me over-anxious. But only he would know how many families would be likely to die of hunger as a result of his profiteering, and how angry the parents of crying children would be in his part of the world.

‘“He was prepared for trouble, but not for what took place,”’ Lady Havering continued, and Celia slipped into the room and took a seat to listen.

‘“As they entered an especially shady stretch of the track to the London road, where the thick wood makes the way twisting and narrow, Mr Wooler heard a long, low whistle. To his horror he saw some thirty men rise out of the ground, some armed with scythes and bill-hooks, some holding cudgels. Blocking the road ahead was a felled tree, and as he looked behind him he heard the crash of a tree falling across the road to cut off his retreat. In a dreadful bellow of a voice, which seemed to come from nowhere, the men with Mr Wooler were ordered to lay down their firearms, dismount from their horses and walk back to the village.”’

I listened intently. It could have no application to us, nor to our land, for I would never, never make such a contract with London merchants – a practice my father had despised. Wideacre wheat was never sold while it was standing in the field. It always went to the local market where the poor could buy their pennyworths and the merchants could bid for it in a fair auction. Yet I felt a hint of unease, for any attack on property frightens its owners and this pitched assault was unlike anything I had ever heard. I never forgot, I think no member of the Quality ever forgets, that we live off the fat of the land and dress in silks and clean linen and live in warm, beautiful mansions – while all around us the majority of the people are in hunger and dirt. Within a two hundred mile radius there were perhaps only three wealthy families such as ourselves. And there were hundreds and thousands of poor people who worked at our beck and call.

So I felt an entirely reasonable fear at the thought of poor people organizing themselves into a pitched attack on property. But at the same time I felt a sneaking feeling of admiration for the men who stood up against this clever Mr Wooler to keep the corn they had grown in their own county, that they might buy at a fair price. They were against the law, and if they were caught they would be hanged. But they would be secret local heroes if they saved the village from a hungry winter, and if there was such a thing as natural justice, then no one could call them wrong. Celia’s reaction was, predictably, more conventional.

‘Dreadful,’ she said.

Lady Havering read on, ‘“As the men hesitated and looked to Mr Wooler for guidance a voice shouted, ‘Are you Wooler? If you move, you are a dead man!’ And then a shot rang out and it knocked Mr Wooler’s hat from his head!”’ Lady Havering stopped reading to see if I was properly aghast and was satisfied at my suddenly appalled expression. Shooting with such accuracy takes years of training. I had only ever known one man, just one man, who could shoot so. Lady Havering turned a page.

‘“Mr Wooler turned in the direction of the shot, seeking the leader of this dreadful assault, and saw a horse, a great black horse with two black dogs and a rider who called out, ‘I have reloaded, Wooler, and the next is for you!’ Mr Wooler could do nothing but obey the order and leave his horse and his whole fortune in the carts and walk back to the village. By the time the Squires had been alerted and the Justices called out the wagons had gone and were only found again four days later, empty.”’

‘Good gracious, how terrible,’ said Celia calmly.

I said nothing. I had a picture very clear in my mind of the darkened wood and the ring of silent men, armed but quite still under orders. The leader on a great horse who could fire with such accuracy and reload so fast, on horseback. If I had not known Ralph I would not have believed such skill was possible. But it could be done; I had seen Ralph do it. Not even Harry with years of practice and the best pistols could do such a thing, but I had seen Ralph shoot and reload with one hand while his horse stood steady, in less time than it takes to count twenty. I found it hard to believe anyone else could have learned the skill, but my mind shied from the logical conclusion.

‘“A few men were questioned by Mr Wooler and despite the most rigorous inquiries they said nothing. They will be hanged, of course, but they utterly refused to identify their evil band or their leader. Mr Wooler himself says he could not see the man clearly. He had a confused impression of a scarf around the man’s face as a disguise.”’ Lady Havering glanced over the top of the page and broke off.

‘Are you unwell, my dear?’ she asked.

‘No, no,’ I said. I realized my hands were clamped on the window seat like a vice. I released my grip and tried to speak normally.

‘What a terrible tale,’ I said. ‘Like a nightmare. Was there …’ I searched my mind for some way to frame the question. ‘Was there nothing odd about the rider, nothing that would make him easy to identify?’

‘No. Apparently not,’ said Lady Havering. ‘Mr Wooler has offered a huge reward but no one has betrayed this man. It seems he may get off scot-free. I am glad he is in Kent. It would be too dreadful if he were near Havering … or Wideacre,’ she said as an afterthought.

I tried to smile and nod but I could not. I had lost control over the expression of my face and my teeth were chattering as if I had an ague. My hands, which had been gripping the edge of the seat, were clamped on it as if I were holding on to a spar while I was drowning. The legless man on the black horse in Portsmouth and the man on the black horse who could fire and reload with such accuracy in Kent could not be the same. It was foolish of me to feel such terror. It was dangerous to be out of control before Lady Havering and in front of Celia’s concerned eyes. I tried to speak normally but I could only croak, my throat muscles rigidly holding the scream that was struggling to rip out. The Ralph of my nightmares seemed to be taking human shapes – many human faces. In Portsmouth, in Kent, everywhere. Leading men against property, always on a black horse, always coming closer and closer to me. Even as I fell into a faint I could feel myself struggling to keep my eyes open in case the darkness of the swoon let Ralph come for me. Ralph on a great black horse with thirty hungry, angry men at his back and his legs hacked off at the knees.

I don’t remember how I got home. I’m told they sent me back in the Havering carriage with Lady Havering herself supporting me, but I remember nothing. I was not unconscious all the time, but I dropped into a faint twice, and the rest of the time I was in a daze of such fear that I could not speak or move. Whenever I closed my eyes I saw in my panicking imagination Ralph drooping like a broken doll over the sharp jaws of the mantrap and heard again the snap of his knee bones and his hoarse scream. When I opened my eyes in terror to escape this picture, I would catch a glimpse of a horseman from the carriage window and think in my fear that it was Ralph on his great black horse.

They called the new doctor from Chichester as soon as I was home, the clever young Dr MacAndrew whose reputation had survived my jest with old Mrs Hodgett. I barely saw him, I scarcely heard him ask some brief, pointed questions, and then I felt his arm around my shoulder and a glass to my lips, and the laudanum slid down my throat like an elixir of peace.

Dreams – thank God and laudanum – I had none. I slept like a child and no black shadow pursued me. I did not wake until the following day and then found Dr MacAndrew by my bedside. I did not smile or look at him. I spoke to him in a low voice, and said only, ‘Please let me sleep again.’

He said, ‘You’d best take my advice and face whatever it is that’s frightening you. You’ve had your fill of sleep.’

I looked at him then, and at my maid standing by the bed and at my mama at the foot. I wondered if I had said anything in my drugged sleep that would ruin me later, and found that I hardly cared. His eyes met mine with a look of compassion and interest, but not like those of a man who has just heard a hanging secret. I believed he knew nothing.

‘I expect you are right,’ I said. ‘But I know what is best for me. I beg you to give me that medicine again and let me sleep.’

His light blue-grey eyes looked into mine, gently appraising me.

‘Well,’ he said tolerantly, ‘perhaps you know your own business best. You may take this to sleep now, and if you sleep through till tomorrow morning I shall call on you then.’

I drank the draught in silence and made no reply to my mama or my maid. I waited with my eyes shut for the merciful oblivion. Just as my terror started returning and my nervous frantic senses believed they could feel Ralph riding closer and closer to Wideacre, to me, I could feel the deep warm glow of the medicine and the sweet peaceful sleep steal over me. I relaxed, and smiled at the wavering image of the doctor in childlike gratitude. He was not especially handsome, but there was something in his square face, his pale blue eyes and his sandy hair that made me feel safe. Even the sound of his question to Mama – ‘What do you think can have set off this nervous attack?’ – failed to frighten me as I slid into sleep.

By the time I awoke the question had been answered and I had no need to frame some lie about nerves. My mama believed she saw in me her own severe reaction to cats and I had been sitting – bless the animal – on a cushion where Celia’s spoiled Persian usually slept. The explanation was too persuasive to be resisted. Dr MacAndrew could look dubious but Mama and Lady Havering settled it between them and by the time I came downstairs on the third day I had no awkward questions. Harry, Mama and Celia, who was visiting for the day, were all quick to rush around and cosset me but no one thought to look beyond the explanation of the cat. The fateful letter from the gossipy friend of Tunbridge Wells had been forgotten by everyone but me.

Of course I could not forget it, and over the next few days it haunted me. I could remember every word of the description. The shady road in the overgrown wood, the brilliant ambush with the tree crashing down behind the wagons. The men coming slowly to their feet out of the bracken at the signal of the whistle – and most of all the leader’s big black horse and his two circling dogs.

I did not need to hear one word of the story again; it was in my ears as I slept every night, and it was my first thought on waking. As the days went by no detail faded but I grew more and more hopeful that the gang would be caught and the public hangman would finish the job with Ralph that I had botched.

An attack of that size would provoke a huge reaction. The magistrates would search until the leader was found. Great rewards would bribe the loyalty of his followers, lengthy questionings and secret tortures would break the will of those who were captured. It would not be long before the leader was brought to trial, sentenced and hanged. So the gruelling game of waiting started again as I scanned the weekly papers for the news.

Nothing. Once there was a paragraph to say that Mr Wooler had increased the reward and that inquiries were proceeding. Once there was the story that half-a-dozen poor men, suspected of being in the gang, had been transported and three others hanged. The preparations for the wedding day went on, and I remained outwardly calm, but my old fears of the dark, of the noise of horses’ hoofbeats, of the rattle of a chain or the clank of iron were back with me. I had a weapon against my night terrors thanks to that meticulous and careful young Dr MacAndrew. In a dark shelf, pushed well to the back near my bed, I had hidden a little bottle of laudanum and every night before I lay down to sleep, two or three pretty little drops slid down my throat and I lay in a golden haze of contentment.

Clever, keen, sandy-haired, sandy-eyelashed Dr MacAndrew gave me my first bottle – but my need quickly outstripped his meagre allowance. When I asked him for a second he made an anxious and disapproving face.

‘I cannot agree to it, Miss Lacey,’ he said in his soft accent. ‘It may be the fashion for young ladies like yourself to take laudanum every night, but you forget, the young ladies forget, that this is not a bedtime drink of milk, but a medicine, a medicine based on opium. We know it is strong; it may be, for some people, addictive. You would not dream of drinking a bottle of brandy a week, Miss Lacey, and yet you are prepared to drink a bottle of laudanum in the same time.

‘I gave it to you when you were overwrought, as a temporary measure to calm you. You are a strong-minded and upright young lady, Miss Lacey. Now your nerves are restored you must seek the solution to your anxieties and solve them – not escape them with laudanum.’

This was too uncomfortably perceptive of the young doctor and I closed the conversation. But his view of laudanum made no difference to me. It would take a stronger man than John MacAndrew to turn me from a course when my mind was set on it. In my life I had known only two such men and one they brought home on a stretcher with his horse limping behind, and the other I had left for dead in the dark. It was better that no one tried to cross or control me.

But Dr MacAndrew was not one to follow a polite shift in a conversation if he had something to say. He looked at me hard but his eyes were gentle.

‘Miss Lacey,’ he said. ‘I attended you in your illness and you may think me too young or too newly qualified to be an expert but I do beg you to trust in my direction.’

I shot him a hard look. His pale northern complexion was flushed, even his ears were pink with embarrassment but his pale blue, honest eyes were steady.

‘You are suffering under some anxiety,’ he said steadily. ‘Something you have imagined, or something real. I urge you to face it and overcome it. Whatever is threatening you, you have a loving family and, I am sure, many friends. You need not be afraid alone. Tell me if I am wrong, and rebuke me if I am impertinent, but I believe I am right in both diagnosis and cure. I think you are afraid of something and you will never escape this fear until you face it.’

Although the day was warm and the sun streamed into the parlour I shivered and drew my shawl around my shoulders. To face the fear would be to face the picture of Ralph sitting on his great black horse. To face the fear would be to imagine the changes in his expression from the smiling sensual confident face of my young, upstart lover, to the twisted grimace of a beggar, an outcast, a cripple unfit for any work. My imagination shied away from the idea, as it always would.

‘You are mistaken,’ I said, my voice low and my slanty eyelids down so he could not see my eyes dark with fear. ‘I thank you for your kindness but I fear nothing. I am not yet fully out of mourning for my papa and I suppose I am still recovering from that shock.’

The young doctor’s flush rose up again. He pulled his case towards him and opened it.

‘I give you this against my better judgement,’ he said, and placed in my hands a small phial of laudanum. ‘It will help you to sleep but you must take it in moderation. Two drops only at night and never during the day. It will help you through this period of change while your brother is married and you prepare for your trip. Once you leave England you should give it up.’

‘I shan’t need to use it when I’m away from here,’ I said.

‘Oh?’ he said, catching at the point too cleverly for my comfort. ‘So your anxieties, like ghosts, cannot cross water –?’

I dropped my eyes again. This young man had been trained to observe and he saw too much. ‘I shall be seeing new sights and meeting new people. I shall forget my worries,’ I said steadily.

‘Well, I’ll not question you further,’ he said and rose to take his leave. I held out my hand and to my surprise he did not shake it but bent and kissed it, a gentle lingering kiss that left a warmth on my fingers after he had straightened up. He still held my hand in his.

‘I would be your friend, Miss Lacey,’ he said gently. ‘I would keep your confidence since I am your medical adviser. But more than that I should like to feel that you can talk to me as a friend.’ Then he gave a little bow, turned and walked from the room.

I plumped back down into my chair in genuine surprise. My spirits rose at the warmth in his voice, and I turned to the mirror over the fireplace to see my reflection. His kiss had brought the colour to my cheeks and the dark shadows under my eyes made me look fragile. Bright, reflected eyes met mine in dancing delight. I did not desire him, of course – he did not have Wideacre, nor could he help me hold it. But whoever disliked a man’s eyes on her? I smiled at myself in simple vanity and joy at having been born with such looks. As my mother came into the room, I turned and smiled at her and she beamed back, pleased to see me well again.

‘Was that Dr MacAndrew’s curricle?’ she asked, shaking out her petticoats and opening her sewing box.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘You should have called for me, Beatrice,’ she said, gently reproving. ‘You really should not see him alone.’

‘He only came to inquire how I was,’ I said casually. ‘I never thought to send for you. He was only passing the house on the way to the Springhams; one of the little boys is ill.’

My mother pursed her mouth to thread her needle and nodded, unconvinced. ‘I can’t like the idea of a doctor who calls socially, anyway,’ she said. ‘In my younger days apothecaries only came when they were sent for, and then came in by the kitchen entrance.’

‘Oh, Mama!’ I said. ‘Dr MacAndrew is hardly an apothecary! He is a doctor, qualified at the University of Edinburgh. We are indeed very lucky that he has chosen to stay in the neighbourhood. Now we shan’t have to send to London every time someone is unwell. It can be nothing but an advantage. And besides, he is a gentleman and that makes it much easier to talk to him.’

‘Oh, well,’ my mother said equably. ‘I suppose it’s the new thing. It just seems so odd, that’s all. But I’m glad he was here to look after you, dearest.’ She paused and made a few stitches. ‘But I shall not hear a word of his attending Celia when her time comes.’

‘Good heavens!’ I said, irritated. ‘They’re a fortnight from marriage and you are already looking for an accoucheuse!’

‘Beatrice, really!’ My mother sounded shocked but there was a smile in her eyes. ‘If you talk so freely I shall have to start planning a marriage for you.’

‘Oh, I’ve no taste for it, Mama,’ I laughed. ‘I couldn’t bear to leave Wideacre and I couldn’t be bothered with a husband. I’ve a fancy to stay here and be a sister to Celia and an aunt to all the dear little Celias and baby Harrys.’

‘All girls say that before their marriage is arranged,’ my mother said calmly. ‘You will be glad enough to leave when you see your future before you.’

I smiled. It was a conversation that could have no conclusion. I sat down beside her and pulled the workbox towards me. We were engaged in the respectable task of hemming Harry’s cravats. My sewing had improved and as I placed the neat, regular stitches I imagined this would be the very cravat he would wear on his wedding day and I would be the one – not shy little Celia – who would pull it from his throat on his wedding night.

‘Harry is planning a surprise for you on your return from the wedding tour,’ Mama said, interrupting my daydream. ‘I mention it only because it would be such a waste to do all the work he is planning when it is not suitable.’

I raised my head and waited in silence.

‘Harry is not just renovating some of the rooms in the west wing; he is converting them for your exclusive use,’ she said. Her voice was unruffled but I thought I could detect a note of anxiety. ‘I am sure that you will tell him it is not what you would like?’

She waited for my assent but I said nothing.

‘Did you know of this scheme, Beatrice?’

‘Harry suggested it some while ago,’ I said. ‘I thought it a good idea. I had no idea he had got so far forward as to have the work set in hand.’

‘You both planned this, and neither of you consulted me?’ Mama was becoming agitated. It was important to keep the whole discussion as calm as possible.

‘Mama, it had gone wholly out of my head,’ I said calmly. ‘Harry thought it a good idea that while I am here I should have a suite of private rooms. Much as I love Celia it would be good for all of us to have our own drawing rooms for privacy. After all, Mama, you have your parlour and dressing room and bedroom upstairs, but I have only a bedroom.’

My mother’s concern as usual was for appearances only.

‘It will look so odd,’ she complained. ‘It is most unusual for a girl of your age even to think of her own rooms in such a way. You should have no need for privacy.’

‘I know, Mama,’ I said gently. ‘But our situation is odd. Harry really does still need help on the land, and you know I keep the accounts of the estate. It will be some years before he is fully able to run the place alone and while he continues these improvements I think he will always need another person to check the figures and measure the yields. It is unusual for a young girl to have these responsibilities but since I do, I need somewhere where I can work without disturbing you or Celia. In any case the alterations are fairly minor. A small study and a dressing room where the old scullery and breakfast room were. I dare say no one will even notice.’

My mother bent her head over her stitching.

‘I don’t understand the estate,’ she said. ‘But I should have thought Harry could have managed it on his own. He is the Master. He ought to be able to run the place without his sister.’

I knew I had won, and the knowledge made me generous. I put my hand on hers.

‘Why should he?’ I asked in a warm, teasing voice. ‘He cannot do without his lovely mother. He obviously needs a sister, too. You have spoiled him, Mama, and we are giving Celia a sultan for a husband who needs an entire harem in his house!’

Mama smiled and the worried look left her eyes.

‘Oh, well,’ she said. ‘If that is what you and Harry and Celia want then I can have no objection. But all the work will have been wasted when you marry a lord and go off to live in Ireland or somewhere!’

‘Oh, no, an Italian prince!’ I said, relieved to be able to end the discussion in a light tone. ‘I shan’t be satisfied unless I come home a princess! Think of the opportunities I shall have in Paris and Italy!’

We laughed together and returned our attention to Harry’s cravats with such industry that at the end of the fortnight he was able to pack fifty new ones in his trunk and see it safely stowed in the post-chaise along with Celia’s four-trunk trousseau and my more modest two trunks and three boxes. The heavy carriage with Harry’s man and my maid and Celia’s maid, all crammed inside, would follow us through France and Italy. An odd trio they would be, and our post-chaise in front even odder, with an untouched wife, but a satisfied husband and an affectionate sister bowling along in the autumn sunshine.

‘I can hardly wait,’ I said and leaned on Harry’s arm as we watched the grooms load the trunks and boxes in the stable yard. Harry’s hand, out of sight, caressed the small of my back in silent agreement. His square hand straddled my spine and stroked me like a cat. Imperceptibly I swayed towards him.

‘Two months of nights,’ he said softly. ‘Two months of nights and no one to notice us.’ His hand rubbed up my spine sliding on the silk of my dress and I had to school my face not to shut my eyes and purr like a stable kitten. The muscles of my face I could keep still, but no control on earth could have stopped my eyes from growing green with desire. The servants were busy round the coaches and no one glanced at us.

‘May I come to your room tonight?’ Harry asked, his mouth so close to my ear I could feel the warmth of his breath. We had been together very seldom in the past few weeks of my illness and drugged sleeping and I could feel my old appetite rise in me. ‘I am a bridegroom, remember,’ Harry said.

I chuckled. ‘Then you should be out carousing with your friends, enjoying your last night of freedom before your jealous, your passionate, wife claims you for ever.’

Harry laughed softly with me. ‘Somehow I cannot see Celia in that role,’ he said. ‘But truly, Beatrice, I should like to lie with you tonight.’

‘No,’ I said, slowly relishing the pleasure of a short abstinence. I pulled myself away from him and turned to face him, my slanty eyes half closed from that secret, brief caress.

‘No, I shall come to you as your bride tomorrow, on the night you are wed.’ I swore it as a promise. ‘Tomorrow we will stand together before the altar and every word you say, every “to have and to hold”, shall be for me. And every reply you hear, every promise to love and honour, every “I do”, shall be from me, although Celia’s is the empty mouth that speaks. She is the bride, but I shall be the wife. It can be her day tomorrow, for tomorrow night will be my night. And tomorrow night, not tonight, my darling. For tonight you can dream of me, and think of me. Tomorrow night the three of us will retire to our rooms and Celia may sleep the sleep of the good and stupid, while you and I will not sleep at all!’

Harry’s blue eyes were bright. ‘I agree!’ he said quickly. ‘This shall be our honeymoon, yours and mine. It is you I marry, and you I take away with me, and Celia can come as the servants or the luggage comes – to serve our convenience.’

I sighed with the pure pleasure of sensual anticipation and the pleasure of victory. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Tomorrow we marry, and tomorrow night we mate.’

We did both. The magic tide that carried me along took me to Harry’s side in the church. I stood before the altar in a dream and heard Harry’s voice promising such pleasures of wedding and bedding that I could think of nothing but what was ahead of me that night.

Celia was, predictably, faint with nerves, and after Lord Havering had conducted her to her bridegroom and stepped back, I had to move forward to support her. Only her slight body stood between Harry and me, and as he spoke the promises of love and pleasures and loyalty he was able to meet my smiling eyes with his bright ones and make all the promises to me.

Celia whispered her responses, and then the service was over. The wedding breakfast was, as one would expect, an insipid affair with much simpering and weeping over Celia who looked flushed and shy and lovely. There was very little attention paid to me, or to Harry, who stood in a corner and drank heartily with Lord Havering. It was tedious. I had no one to talk to and was forced to endure Celia’s silly sisters and sillier friends. Even Lord Havering’s quick lecherous glances raking the length of my body in the grey silk dress did little to console me, for he took Harry off to the study and, apart from some elderly neighbours, we women were left on our own. That made the arrival of Dr MacAndrew all the more of a pleasure, and the ripple of interest as he crossed the room straight to my side made me raise my eyes and smile at him.

‘I am very pleased to see you,’ he said, taking a seat beside me. ‘And on such a happy day, as well.’

I noted his tact in not referring to my health and I saw also, for the first time, what an attractive man he was. The other girls – the Havering sisters and Celia’s two other bridesmaids – were watching him like sparrowhawks out of the corner of their eyes, and I turned my head to smile at them and rub their silly noses in their simpering vanity.

‘Will you be away very long, Miss Lacey?’ he asked in his gentle Scots voice.

‘Just till Christmas,’ I said. ‘I could not bear to be away from home at Christmas and Harry and I both want to be back in plenty of time for the spring sowing.’

‘I hear you are a keen agronomist?’ He said it without a hint of the patronizing amusement I was used to from neighbours whose lands yielded half the profits of ours and yet thought my interest unbecoming.

‘I am,’ I said. ‘My papa reared me to take an interest in our land and I love Wideacre and am glad to learn all I can about it.’

‘It is a fine thing to have such a lovely home,’ he said. ‘I have not the advantage of a country seat. My family has always bought and sold property so frequently I never had a chance to put down roots.’

‘You are an Edinburgh family?’ I asked with interest.

‘My father owns the MacAndrew Line,’ he said diffidently. At once, pieces of information slipped into my head like the solution to a puzzle. His presence in the Haverings’ house was explained at once. The MacAndrew Line was a highly successful line of trading ships plying from London, Scotland and India. This young doctor came from a family of fabulous wealth. Lady Havering would be swift to overlook his unusual profession in return for a chance at one of the greatest fortunes in Britain. She would have already earmarked him for one of the girls, and Lord Havering would already have tried to persuade the young doctor to invest in some sure enterprise that his lordship could set in motion if he only had the advantage of a few of the MacAndrew thousands.

‘I am surprised he could spare you so far from home,’ I said.

Dr MacAndrew laughed shortly. ‘I’m afraid he was unhappy when I left the family home and the family business,’ he said. ‘He wanted very much for me to work with him, but I have two older brothers and a younger one as well who will do that. I set my heart on medicine ever since I was a young boy and despite my father’s objections I managed to get my training at the university.’

‘I should not like to have much to do with sick people,’ I said, speaking without reserve to this gentle young man with the warm eyes. ‘I don’t have the patience.’

‘No, why should you?’ he said sympathetically. ‘I should like everyone in the world to be as fit and as strong as you. When I have seen you galloping your horse up to the downs, I have laughed with sheer pleasure at such a brilliant sight. You would not fit in a sickroom, Miss Lacey. I would always prefer to see such youth and loveliness in the open air.’

I was flattered. ‘You should not have seen me galloping at all,’ I said demurely. ‘I was not supposed to go off the estate while we were in mourning, and I should never gallop in public. But when one has a good horse, and the wind is blowing just softly, I cannot bear not to.’

He smiled at my enthusiasm and fell to talking of horses. I had noticed, even in the period of my illness, that he had a good eye for a horse. The bays that pulled his curricle were a splendid pair: high-stepping, arch-necked, ruddy-bronze.

I had even wondered idly where a young doctor found the money to buy such beauties, but now he had explained that. I told him about the first pony Papa bought me, and he told me of his first hunting dog, and I forgot that half the eyes of the room were on us.

‘Beatrice, dear …’ my mother said hesitantly. I glanced up to see Lady Havering bearing down upon us. She swept Dr MacAndrew off like a competent hostess, to meet some of the other guests, and my mama reminded me that I must take Celia upstairs and help her change out of her wedding gown for the journey.

The extent of my help was gazing dreamily out of the window while Celia’s maid bustled about, and making sure that my own cloak and bonnet were smooth and straight. I was miserable at leaving Wideacre. I could hardly bear to leave the familiar sight of the hills with the trees just starting to turn colour, and there were tears in my eyes as I kissed Mama goodbye and jumped into the carriage. She, silly dear, took them for herself, and kissed me warmly and blessed me. In the crowd of people around the post-chaise, kissing Celia’s hand and calling out reminders and good wishes, I looked for Dr MacAndrew. He was standing at the back of the crowd and his eyes met mine. There was a little warm smile in them, especially for me, and I felt suddenly still. In the noise of the crowd I could not hear what he said, but his lips formed three words, ‘Come back soon.’

I sat back in the chaise with a smile on my face and a certain warmth around me as we drove off on honeymoon.