Meridon

22

I found a patch of sunlight where the old beech leaves were warm and dry and smelled nutty. I took Sea to the river bank and he leaned over and drank some sweet water and then I hitched him to a nearby tree. I sat and watched the flow of the river over the sandy yellow stones, and once or twice I saw the mottled brown shadow of a trout moving slowly upstream.

Lord Peregrine was so long that I thought he had forgotten, or taken his horse into a stable and fallen asleep on the hay bale. But then I heard footsteps and a voice calling, ‘Halloo! Halloo!’ like an unseasonal huntsman and I jumped to my feet and called, ‘Over here!’

He came crashing through woods, ducking beneath the low branches, carrying a large wickerwork picnic-box.

‘Look what I’ve got!’ he said proudly. ‘It’s later than we thought, about seven o’clock. Most of the kitchenmaids were up and they made me this. Our housekeeper was there as well and Mama asked to be wakened early this morning for she’s going to Chichester today. They told Mama I had met you and you’re to come and see her when we’ve had our breakfast and she’s dressed.’

‘I can’t,’ I said, suddenly fearful of another person who would watch me like Will and James Fortescue watched me. My sense of holiday from those two drained away from me at the thought of having to face Lord Peregrine’s mother.

He grinned. ‘Oh you’ll be all right, don’t worry,’ he said bracingly. ‘She’s got her eye on you all right. You could walk in there stark naked and she would tell you how pretty you were looking. We’ve all been waiting to see what would happen to the estate. My papa had a mind to buy it years ago, but your guardians or whatever would never sell. As soon as I said in the kitchen that I had met you, old Mrs Bluett our housekeeper was up the front stairs like a whirlwind to tell Mama that the mystery heiress had come home.’

He lifted the lid of the picnic box and suddenly checked. ‘I say, it isn’t all a hum is it?’ he asked. ‘You weren’t making a fool of me? You really are her?’

I nodded. ‘I am,’ I said. ‘It’s not a game I would play if I had a free choice, I am her.’

‘That’s all right then,’ he said, uninterested in anything else. ‘Here, have some chicken.’

He heaved the picnic basket between us and laid aside the napery and the silverware, the fine china with the crest on it and chose instead to eat with his fingers. I hesitated for a moment, unable to believe that Lord Peregrine himself could eat like a gypsy brat; and then weak with relief and hunger I tore a drumstick off the perfectly roasted chicken and settled down into the leaves to eat the first meal I had enjoyed since coming to Wideacre.

We were like children, Lord Peregrine and I in the equal uncritical sunshine. We were like children of the childhood I should have had. I was only sixteen, I guessed he was little older; and we sat in the warmth of the early day and ate greedily and messily until there was nothing left but chicken bones sucked clean and a handful of crumbs. I leaned over the stream and drank deeply of the sweet chalk-clean water until the bones of my face ached with its icy touch. I dipped my face right in and washed in the coldness. I came up with dripping bedraggled hair and Lord Peregrine carelessly tossed a fine linen napkin to me and I wiped myself dry.

‘There should have been wine,’ he said, lying on his back and looking up at the sky. In the tops of the trees a cuckoo was calling and wood-pigeons cooed. ‘Or champagne would have been nice.’ He put both hands behind his head, his profile a line as clear as a statue against the darkness of the wood behind him, the wind lifting his fair curls off his forehead. ‘They keep trying to stop me drinking,’ he said sulkily. ‘They even suggested I had come home inebriated!’

‘You were drunk as a lord,’ I said plainly, watching the droop of his lazy eyelids.

They flashed open at that but the blue eyes were merry. ‘I say, that’s rather good!’ he said with a chuckle. ‘And yes, I was! But what else is a chap supposed to do? Anyone would think it was a household of Methodists the way my sisters go on. Mama is all right most of the time. But even she scolds a bit. And now I’m down from Oxford it’ll be even worse.’

‘Down?’ I asked, not understanding him.

‘Thrown out,’ he explained. He grinned at me, his white teeth even and straight. ‘I never did any work – not that they cared for that – but I kicked up a few larks as well. I think it was the hole in the dean’s punt which finished me off!’

I stretched out beside him, lying on my belly so I could watch his quick, fluid face.

‘Candlewax!’ he said. ‘I made a hole and then filled it with candlewax. It took ages to do, and a good deal of planning. It went perfectly as well! It didn’t sink till he was well out in the river. It was a wonderful sight,’ he sighed, a smile haunting his mouth. ‘Everyone knew it was me, of course. He never could take a joke.’

‘What will you do now then?’ I asked.

Lord Peregrine frowned a little. ‘Where are we?’ he asked vaguely. ‘Not July yet is it?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Nearly May.’

His face cleared at once. ‘Oh well then,’ he said. ‘London for the end of the season if Mama will give me some money that will take me till June. Then I’ll be here and Brighton for the summer, as well as going to some house parties. I go to Scotland for the shooting in August, every year, and then to Leicestershire for the fox-hunting. That sort of thing.’

I nodded. I had not known that the Quality had a seasonal movement as clear as that of travelling folk. It was only the respectable middling sort, from the yeoman farmers like Will Tyacke up to city folk like James Fortescue, who stayed in the same place and could tell you what they were doing year in, year out with no changes for any seasons.

‘It sounds fun,’ I said cautiously.

Lord Peregrine closed his smiling eyes. ‘It is,’ he said with deep satisfaction. ‘If there were more money in my pockets I should think myself in heaven. And if I don’t have to go back to university in September I shall be in heaven indeed.’

He stretched out and dozed and I rested on one elbow and watched his face. The trees sighed over our heads, the river babbled softly. We were so still that a kingfisher came out of its hole a little further upstream and darted away, a fat little dart of turquoise, past us. Then he stirred and sat up and yawned.

‘Come and meet my mama then,’ he said. He got to his feet and put a hand out to me and pulled me up. I went unwillingly and unhitched Sea.

‘I had better go home and change and come back in my riding habit,’ I said. ‘And I should tell Mr Fortescue where I am.’

Lord Peregrine laughed. ‘Don’t you dare!’ he said. ‘She’s delighted to catch you before anyone has a chance to warn you off. She and Mr Fortescue have been daggers drawn for years. She doesn’t like the way he runs Acre, she thinks he keeps wages up and wheat prices down. She’ll love you just as you are, and if it upsets Mr Fortescue – all the better!’

I led Sea out through the wood and Lord Peregrine came behind swinging the basket.

‘Does she really dislike him, Lord Peregrine?’ I asked. A seed of an idea was in my mind. If Lady Havering knew anything about wages and wheat prices she might be the very person I needed to give me an outsider’s view of what was talking place on my land.

‘Call me Perry,’ he said negligently. ‘They were on good terms at first, she approached him about buying the Wideacre estate. Papa was alive then and there was some money around, we would have mortgaged it of course, and rented it out. Probably built some houses on the farmland, or planted more wheat. Your Mr Fortescue read her a lecture on profiteering and refused outright to sell. They didn’t like that much of course. But then when the whole estate went over to this Levellers’ republic both Mama and Papa thought that Mr Fortescue was simply insane! Playing ducks and drakes with your money, too!’

I nodded. ‘Did she ever tackle him with it?’ I asked.

‘Oh yes! He told her,’ Perry’s eyes sparkled. ‘He told her that there were more important things than an extra percentage on investment! He told her that there were more important things in life than a quick return on capital!’ He laughed aloud, a joyous innocent laugh. ‘My papa had died by then and my mama would say that there was nothing more important than money. Especially if you don’t have enough of it!’

I nodded and said nothing. I liked the sound of her ladyship more and more.

‘Does she run this estate or do you?’ I asked.

Lord Peregrine looked at me as if I had suggested an impossibility.

‘Well I can’t yet,’ he said. ‘Not while I’m at university. My mama does it all with her bailiff. When I’m married and take over I shall run it then, I suppose. Or I’ll keep the bailiff on and he’ll do it all.’

‘So she does it now?’ I confirmed.

‘She does it,’ he said. ‘Until I marry or come of age.’ He broke off and looked at the trees consideringly. ‘It’s a plaguey long time to wait,’ he complained. ‘I’m only seventeen now and I never get enough money. I shall owe the place a thousand times over by the time I get hold of the full income.’

The track we were following took us to the side of the house and Lord Peregrine led the way around the back of a tall-walled garden. ‘Formal garden,’ he said nodding at one section. ‘Kitchen garden,’ he said where the pale greying stone turned to soft red brick. He opened a little gateway into a cobbled stable yard and showed me the loose-box where I could leave Sea. I went in with him and took off his saddle and bridle. Lord Peregrine watched me over the half-door, not offering to help.

‘Why are you dressed like that?’ he asked, as if it had just occurred to him.

I glanced up. The sunlight behind him was glinting on his fair hair so that it gave him a halo around his perfect face. The world of the show and the travelling life and the noise and the hardship was unspeakably distant.

‘I was working before I came here,’ I said briefly. ‘These were my working clothes. I haven’t any new ones yet.’

He nodded and opened the stable door. He leaned towards me confidentially. I could smell the warm hint of brandy on his breath, he had taken a drink in the house while they were packing the picnic.

‘It’s awfully improper,’ he said owlishly. ‘Thought you should know. I don’t mind. Mama won’t mind, because it’s you. But there’s no point in setting other people’s backs up for nothing. Much the best thing to wear girls’ clothes.’

I nodded, ‘I will,’ I said as serious as he.

‘Now,’ he said. ‘Mama.’

He took me in through the stable door across a marble floor patterned with black and white tiles where my boots sounded common and loud and where Lord Peregrine’s footsteps weaved noticeably from the direct path. He led me up a shallow graceful flight of stone steps. I had a confused impression of another floor and a huge arched window making the whole place coldly bright. Then up another flight of stairs, dark noisy wooden ones this time and along a gallery lined with pictures of forbidding ladies and gentlemen who looked down on Lord Peregrine as he tacked from side to side, narrowly missing the occasional armchair and table. Then we went along a carpeted corridor and he tapped on a large double door set in the middle of the wall.

‘Enter,’ said a voice, and Lord Peregrine made a funny face at me, and we went in.

The Dowager Lady Clara was sitting up in a massive fourposter bed, holding a delicate scarlet cup in one hand, swathed in impressive folds of pale blue silk. Her hair was hidden by a blue silken cap, very grand and high with many bows; her face was smooth and pink and smiling, her eyes were as sharp as gimlets.

‘Here she is,’ Lord Peregrine announced. His mother shot one cool look at him and Lord Peregrine swung into a deep bow. ‘Mama, may I present Miss Sarah Lacey of Wideacre Hall? Miss Lacey this is my mama, the Dowager Lady Clara Havering.’

I made a little bow, as if I were in the ring. A curtsey did not suit breeches, and anyway I was too awkward to move.

Lady Havering reached out her hand, heavy with large-stoned rings.

‘You may kiss me, my dear,’ she said. Her voice was lowpitched and strong. ‘I think I must be your aunt. Certainly your nearest relation. Welcome home at last.’

I stepped forward awkwardly and brushed my lips against her cheek. She smelled heavenly, of flowers. I had never smelled such perfume before. Her cheek was cool and dry under my reluctant lips and she let my hand go at once, before I had time to feel uncomfortable.

‘Peregrine, you may go,’ she said. ‘Tell someone to bring a fresh pot of chocolate and two cups. You should go and bathe and change your linen. Miss Lacey will stay here with me, send someone over to Wideacre Hall to tell them where she is.’ She turned her face to me. ‘Will you keep us company for the day, Sarah?’

I flushed. ‘I cannot,’ I said stumbling. ‘I thank you, I should like to, but I cannot. Mr Fortescue will expect me home and there are business affairs to attend to…’

‘Well thank the Lord you are able to attend to them yourself at last!’ she said waspishly. ‘And thank the Lord there are any business affairs left on that estate!’ She smiled at me again. ‘Very well, not today. But within the week you must come to us for the day.’ She gave a rich deep chuckle. ‘I should think you would be glad to escape from that awful Bristol merchant, won’t you, my dear?’

She turned to Lord Peregrine. ‘Go then, dear,’ she said sweetly. ‘You may come back when you have changed.’

Lord Peregrine smiled at me and wavered out through the double door. I turned back to his mother with some trepidation. She was openly staring at me.

‘Tell me then,’ she said invitingly. ‘Where in the world did you spring from? And where have you been all this while?’

I hesitated. Meridon of Gower’s Equestrian Show was dead and gone. I would never bring her back.

‘I was given away to gypsies,’ I said evasively. ‘I had to work for my living. I was travelling with them.’

She nodded. ‘Poor?’ she said. It was hardly a question.

‘Very,’ I replied.

She nodded. ‘But now you are poor no longer,’ she said. ‘Now you are one of the Quality, and wealthy. How do you think you will like it?’

I looked away from her towards her bedroom window. The Hall faced west and I could see some of the Downs away to the left. ‘I shall accustom myself,’ I said steadily.

She laughed, a rich deep throaty chuckle at that. ‘Any dependants?’ she asked and at my shake of the head she pursued her theme: ‘No cousins? Nor aunts? Foster brothers and sisters? No sweethearts? No friends? No young husband? No secret babies?’

‘No one,’ I said.

She looked at me narrowly, looking past my young face, past my old tired eyes, past my clothes, into my heart. ‘Are you a virgin?’ she asked.

I flushed scarlet. ‘Yes,’ I said awkwardly, and when she said nothing but merely raised her beautifully curved eyebrows in surprise, I said: ‘I don’t like being touched.’

She nodded as if she understood. ‘And the people who brought you up?’ she asked. ‘Those that you have been living with, you’ve ditched them all?’

I met her bright look without wavering. ‘All of them,’ I said.

There was a tap on the door and a dark-gowned maid came in with a silver tray and a pot of chocolate. Lady Havering threw back the bedcovers and rose from her bed and swished over to take her seat at the window. She gestured me into the seat before her so that I faced her and the clear light.

‘What will you do?’ she asked. ‘You’re rather alone. Unless you have taken a fancy to the little Bristol trader.’

‘I haven’t,’ I said. I felt a moment’s discomfort at my disloyalty. But then I remembered the quiet house and the noise of my drinking soup and my heart hardened. ‘I don’t know what to do. Mr Fortescue talks of teachers of elocution and dancing, and tells me I should have a lady companion.’ I grimaced. ‘Then there’s the land,’ I said. ‘I need to know what’s being done on it and yet there is no one to ask but Mr Fortescue and Will Tyacke.’

Lady Havering poured the chocolate and then sat back and looked at me again. ‘Do you disapprove of his guardianship of your land?’ she asked, her voice very neutral.

‘Yes I do,’ I said firmly. ‘It is being run for the gain of the working people, that means the Hall makes a loss every time we sow and reap. The village is doing well out of it, but the estate gets a share of what it ought to have entire.’

Lady Havering nodded grimly. ‘I’ve not seen the estate books,’ she said. ‘But I have eyes in my head and I have seen them undersell me in the Midhurst market for season after season until the price of food has been forced down and held down. It’s revolutionary! It destroys the value of property.’

I nodded.

‘How old are you?’ she asked.

‘Sixteen or thereabouts,’ I said.

She nodded and tapped her teeth with her long fingernail. ‘Five years until you can run the estate for yourself,’ she said softly. ‘A long time to have to endure Mr Fortescue’s amateur farming.’

‘A long time to live with a lady companion,’ I said with feeling. ‘Life with a lady companion in that house, with Mr Fortescue coming to stay.’

Lady Havering nodded, as if she had come to some decision. ‘Not to be borne,’ she said briskly. ‘Drink your chocolate up, child, and I will come with you to see Mr Fortescue. I’ll take you under my wing, you need not fear the lady companion. I’ve launched one daughter successfully into the world and I can certainly do it again with you. And you won’t shock me. Your lady companion would probably pop off with spasms within a week!’

I obediently raised my cup but I did not drink, I looked at her over the rim.

‘What do you mean, “take me under your wing”?’ I asked.

She gave me one of her rare sweet smiles. ‘I will look after you,’ she said pleasantly. ‘You can come and stay here and I will teach you the things you need to know to be a lady in society. When the Season starts again I will bring you out, introduce you to the people you need to know. I will choose your dresses for you and teach you how to dance, how to eat, how to behave. You are my cousin, you have no family but me. It is fitting.’

I did not stop to think that Lady Havering did not look like a woman who was burdened with a sense of duty. I put my cup down with a clatter.

‘Would you do that for me?’ I demanded. ‘For me?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I will.’

I said nothing for a moment and she was silent too. Then I spoke, and the delight had gone from my voice.

‘What for?’ I said shrewdly. ‘What d’you get out of this?’

She poured herself a fresh cup and she chuckled. ‘Very good, Sarah,’ she said. ‘Yes, I do “get something out of this”. Firstly, I irritate your precious Mr Fortescue which will be a great delight to me. Secondly, while I am chaperoning you I shall charge my dress bills to your estate which can very well afford them, whereas I cannot. Thirdly, by doing this I am making it more likely that you are not infected with Wideacre Jacobinism which is something I cannot afford to have on my doorstep. The more Mr Fortescue leaves you well alone, the sooner you can get the estate back into order.’

‘You would teach me to read the accounts and understand what is going on?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You can hire my manager yourself and use him to check this madness on Wideacre. You can stop it going any further by refusing to hand over the land to the village as they want. And as soon as you are of age you can turn it into the profitable place it by rights should be.’

I spat in my palm and reached it out to her across the little table. ‘Done,’ I said.

The pleasant smile on her face never flickered. She spat in her own and shook hands. ‘Done,’ she repeated. Then her face changed and she turned my hand over, palm up, so that she could see the deep hard lines and the callouses and rope burns.

‘Gracious me,’ she said. ‘Turning you into a young lady will be no sinecure. We will start with your hands! Whatever have you been doing to get them into this state? I doubt we’ll ever get them soft.’

I looked at my palms for a moment. The bulge at the thumb and at the base of the fingers was as tough as old leather. I thought of the reins I had held and the ropes I had pulled and the trapeze bar.

‘I was working,’ I said, taciturn.

She nodded. ‘You needn’t tell me,’ she said. ‘As long as no one from your past comes pestering me, then it is none of my affair and it can stay that way. But tell me one thing: Is there anyone who would recognize you or follow you?’

‘No,’ I said. Robert Gower would let me go. Jack would run a mile rather than face me.

‘Did you commit any crimes?’ she asked bluntly.

I reviewed the poaching and the gambling, the horse-breaking and the little cheats. I looked up and her eyes were on me.

‘Nothing spectacular,’ I said.

She threw back her head and laughed at that and the bows on her cap bobbed.

‘Very well,’ she said. ‘Nothing spectacular. I shall ask no more. Have you told Mr Fortescue all this?’

I shrugged. ‘A little,’ I said. ‘Enough to prove to him who I am. Nothing more.’

She nodded as if she were pleased. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘As your duenna I shall make rules for your behaviour. The first is that you will wear gloves all the time, and the other is even more important.’

I waited.

‘You’ll speak of your past to no one,’ she said bluntly. ‘What you have told me you will tell no one else. When you move in society we shall say merely that you were living quietly in the country with humble people before you were found by the trustees. Your background will be obscure but deeply respectable. Have you got that?’

I nodded. ‘Obscure but deeply respectable,’ I said turning the words over in my mouth. ‘Yes, I’ve got that.’

She shot a sideways smile at me. ‘Good,’ she said.

There was a tap at the door and she turned her head and called: ‘Enter!’

Lord Peregrine put his head tentatively around the door. ‘It’s me, Mama,’ he said.

‘Excellent, you can come in,’ she said briskly.

Bathed and dressed he was radiantly beautiful, as lovely as a girl. He was wearing a dark blue riding coat with pale tight breeches and high patent-leather hessian boots. His blond hair was tightly curled and still wet from his bath. His eyes were a limpid blue and only the violet shadows under them showed that he had missed a night’s sleep. His mother looked at him coolly.

‘You’ll do,’ she said.

Lord Peregrine flashed an engaging smile at her. ‘Why, thank you, Mama!’ he said as if at a great compliment and then he stood quite still, as if he were awaiting orders.

He soon had them. He was to escort me back to Wideacre Hall and to take his mama’s card to announce that she would visit Mr Fortescue that afternoon. He was to await a reply but to stay no longer than twenty minutes, and he was to drink nothing but tea or coffee.

‘I don’t know what sort of table you think he keeps there, Mama,’ Lord Peregrine said pleasantly. ‘But he doesn’t look to me like the sort of chap who offers you champagne at ten in the morning.’

She smiled grimly. ‘I don’t doubt it,’ she said. ‘And then you’ll come straight home.’

‘Yes, Mama,’ he said, his smile unblemished.

I took it that I was dismissed and I rose to leave. Lady Clara shot a quick measuring glance at me.

‘Properly dressed, you would be beautiful,’ she said. ‘I’ll have the Chichester dressmaker come out tomorrow. You will come to me then and be fitted for new clothes.’

I nodded. ‘Thank you, Lady Clara,’ I said politely.

She held out her hand to me and raised her cheek for a kiss and then I managed to get myself past the delicate little table and over the pale-coloured rugs without accident. I don’t think I breathed easy until the door was shut behind us, and Lord Peregrine was leading the way back down the gallery.

‘Taking you in hand, is she?’ he asked.

‘Aye,’ I said.

He nodded, and paused at the top of the wooden staircase to look at me. ‘Well that’s good,’ he said encouragingly. ‘She’ll get you a girl’s dress. I was thinking about it while I was having my bath and I couldn’t think where to get one. I’m glad about that.’

I chuckled. ‘I’m glad too,’ I said.

‘And you’ll be coming here again!’ he said. ‘That’s grand. I was afraid it was going to be awfully slow until I went to London, but you and I can ride together and I can show you around.’

‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘No trouble at all,’ he said cordially and then he took my arm and we strolled across the marble hall as if we were young brothers, as if I had been born and bred in such a place, as if we were best friends.