Meridon

28

I went over to the window to draw back the curtains. It was still early and the moon was coming up. As I stood, looking out towards the moonlit Common, I saw a horseman come riding down the silvery track towards the back garden of Havering Hall. I saw him ride under the lee of the wall and then I lost sight of him. He must have left his horse tied up, because in a few moments the figure appeared on the top of the wall, swung a leg over and dropped down into the informal garden at the back of the house. I watched in silence. I would have known Will Tyacke from fifty miles away.

He walked across the lawn as if he did not care who saw him trespassing in darkness, and then he stopped before the house, scantling the windows as if he owned the place. A low laugh escaped me and I leaned forward and pulled up the sash window and stuck my head out. He raised a hand in greeting and came unhurriedly to the flower bed beneath my window and for a moment I thought of some other Lacey girl, and some other young man, who had whispered together on the night air and known they were talking of love.

‘What is it?’ I said peremptorily.

Will’s face was in shadow. ‘It’s this,’ he said. He had something white in his hand. I could not see what it was. He stooped to the path at his feet, and straightened up, wrapping the paper around a stone.

‘I thought you would want to know,’ he said. He was almost apologetic. ‘From something you once said, earlier this summer, when we were friends.’

He made as if to throw it, and I stepped back before I could ask if we might still be friends. His aim was sure, the stone came sailing through the window wrapped in the white paper. By the time I picked it up and was at the window again he was walking across the lawn and scaling the wall. I watched him go. I did not call him back.

Instead I unwrapped the stone he had thrown for me and smoothed out the paper. The white was the wrong side, the blank side. On the inside, very creased as if half a dozen people had pored over it, spelling out the words, was a bright scarlet picture with a white horse in the middle and two trapeze flyers going over the top: a man and two girls. In curly letters of gold it said: Robert Gower’s Amazing Equestrian and Aerial Show.

It was them. Their tour had brought them here. I should have expected them earlier if I’d had my wits about me. Selsey to Wideacre was just a little way, they must have gone on down the coast, or perhaps they stopped for a while after burying her. Somewhere they must have found another fool for the trapeze. They were going on as if nothing had happened.

For a moment there was a rage so hot and so burning that I could see nothing, not even the garish poster, for the red mist which was in my head and behind my eyes. It had made no difference to them…the thing which had happened. Robert was still working and planning, Jack was still standing on the catcher frame, still smiling his lazy nervous smile. Katie was as vapid and as pretty as ever. They were still touring, they were still taking good gates. It had made no difference to them. It had killed her, it had killed me. It had made no difference to them at all.

I dropped the handbill and walked to the window and threw it open again to breathe in the cold night air to try to slow the rapid thudding of my heart. I was so angry. If I could have killed every one of them I would. I wanted to punish them. They were feeling nothing; although her life was over, and mine was an empty shell. I stood there for a long time in the cold but then I steadied and I turned back to the room, picked up the paper, smoothed it out again and looked to see where they were working.

They were playing outside Midhurst. They were doing three shows, the last one a late, lantern-lit show in an empty barn just a little way down the road. If I had wanted I could have gone and seen them tonight.

I gave a deep shuddering sigh. I could let them go. I could let them work my neighbouring village. I could let Rea poach the odd rabbit from my Common. I could let them pass within four miles of me. They did not know I was here. I had no need to tell them. They could go on into the high roads and byways of travellers, of gypsies. These people were my people no longer. Their ways were not my ways. We would never meet. I would never have to see them. They were a life I had left behind. I could cut myself in two and say, ‘That was the old life, the old life with her; it is gone now, all gone.’

I smoothed out the handbill and put my finger under the words, spelling them out, looking at the pictures again. There were the clues which had made Will bring it to me. ‘Robert Gower’ it said in curly letters. I had told him I worked for a man called ‘Robert’ and beside the picture of the white stallion it said ‘Snow the Amazing Arithmetical Horse’. I had told him of a horse called Snow which could do tricks. I knew that he remembered things I said to him, even light, silly things. He perhaps thought that these friends, these old friends from another life might help me look at the Haverings and at Perry with new eyes. He knew that he had lost me, that Wideacre had lost me, that I belonged nowhere now. Perhaps he had thought that the old life might call me back, might help me to find myself again.

He did not know that to think of the old life made me more careless about myself, more feckless about my future than anything else could have done. For they, and I, were still alive. But she was dead.

I sat in the window-seat and watched the moon for a while, but I was uneasy and could not settle. I looked at the little ormolu clock on the mantelpiece, there was still time. If I wished, I could ride and see the show, see how it was for them without her, without me. I could go and be concealed by the crowd, watch them in silence and secrecy, satisfy my curiosity. I could watch them and learn how it was for them, now we two were gone. Then leave among the crowd, and come slowly home.

Or I could go and be among them like an avenging fury, my eyes black with unsatisfied anger. This was my land here, I was the squire. I could name Jack as a killer, call Rea as a witness and no one could gainsay me. With my word against his, I could get Jack hanged. Not even Robert could stand against the squire of Wideacre on Wideacre land. I could confiscate the horses, send Katie back to the Warminster poorhouse, Rea back to the Winchester Guardians, send Robert to Warminster to die of shame. I was gentry now, I could settle my scores as gentry do – with the law and the power of the law. I could break them all with my squire’s law.

Or I could run now, from the power and from the boredom of the Quality life. I could put on my old clothes – their clothes, which they had given me – and tuck up my hair under my cap and go back to them. I knew how they would receive me, they would welcome me as a long-lost daughter, the ponies would whinny to see me. They would hug me and weep with me – easy, feckless tears. Then they would teach me how the acts had changed now she was gone, and where I could fit in the new work. I could walk away from my life here and leave the special loneliness and emptiness of Quality life. I could leave here with pockets as light as when I had arrived; and the man who hated gin traps and Mr Fortescue could run the land as they wished, and need never trouble themselves about me again.

I did not know what I wanted to see, what I wanted to feel. It seemed like a lifetime since I had walked away from them and said to myself that I was never going back. But I had not known then what it was to be lost.

After half an hour I could stand it no longer. I trod softly over to the wardrobe and pulled out my riding habit. Perry would be drinking alone in his room, perhaps humming quietly to himself, deaf to the rest of the house. Lady Clara would be writing letters in the parlour or perhaps reading in the library. Neither of them would hear my steps on the servants’ stairs. No housemaid that I might chance to meet would have the courage to interrupt Lady Clara to tell her that Miss Lacey had ridden out into the twilight. I could come and go as I wished in secret.

I dressed quickly, familiar now with the intricate buttons at the back, with the way to quickly smooth my gloves and pin the grey hat. It had a veil of net which I had never used but now I pulled it down. I glanced at myself in the mirror. My eyes glowed green behind the veil, but my betraying copper hair was hidden by the hat. I had eaten well all summer and my face was plumper. I was no longer a half-starved gypsy brat with a bruised face. If someone did not know who I really was, if someone thought I was gentry, they would have called me beautiful. My mouth pulled down at the thought. In my head I saw her dark glossy hair and her rosy smiling face, I thought how she would have looked in these clothes and there was no pleasure for me in them. I turned from the mirror and crept down the servants’ stairs which led straight down to the stable yard.

Sea had been brought in now that nights were getting colder and I went first to the tack room and then to his loose-box. Both were unlocked, they would water-up at twilight and lock up then. The light was only fading now. I humped his saddle myself and he lowered his head so that I could put on his bridle. As I tightened his girth and led him out, a stable lad came out of the hay loft and looked warily at me.

‘I’m going for a ride,’ I said, and my voice was no longer the muted tones of the young lady. I was Meridon again, Meridon who had ordered Rea, who could shout down a drunken father. ‘I’m going alone and I don’t want them told. Them, up at the house. D’you understand me?’

He nodded, his eyes round, saying nothing.

‘When they come to feed and water the horses and they find Sea gone you can tell them that it is all right. That I have taken him out and that I will bring him back later,’ I said.

He nodded again, boggle-eyed.

‘All right?’ I asked, and I smiled at him.

As if my smile had made the sun come out he beamed at me.

‘All right, Miss Sarah!’ he said, suddenly finding his tongue. ‘Aye! All right! And I won’t tell nobody where you’ve gone an’ all. Aye! an’ they won’t even know you’ve gone for they all went off to the ‘orses show and left me here on my own. They went this afternoon and they’ll have stopped at the Bull on the way back. Only I know you’re out, Miss Sarah. An’ I won’t tell nobody.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, a little surprised. Then I led Sea to the mounting block, got myself into the side-saddle and walked out of the yard.

I took the main drive to Midhurst, I thought Gower’s show would be on the south side of the town, quite near, and I was right. I could see the lamplight glinting from the half-open barn door from a while away. In the road, tethered, were a handful of horses belonging to farmers and their wives who had ridden over to see the show. There were even a few gigs with the horses tied to the fence to wait.

I checked Sea and looked at the barn. There was no one on the door so they were all working around the back. I thought my fine clothes and my hat with the veil would serve to disguise me, especially if they were all in the ring and I kept to the back of the crowd. I took Sea over to the side of the road and tied him alongside the farmers’ nags in the hedgerow. Then I picked up the swooping extra length of my riding habit skirt and strode up the path to the barn door.

I heard a great ‘oooh!’ as I entered and I slid in along the wall, steadying myself with the wall against my back. I feared I was going to be sick.

Jack was there. Jack the devil, Jack the child, Jack the smiling killer. Jack was standing on the catcher frame where he had been before. And it was as I had feared and as I had dreamed and as I had sworn it could not be. It was the same. It was the same. It was the same as it had always been. As if she had never been there, as slight as an angel on the pedestal board, as trusting as a child flying towards him with her arms out. Smiling her naughty triumphant smile because she had been so certain that she had won a great wager and earned herself safety and happiness for the rest of her life. It was the same as if he had not done it. It was just as if she, and I, had never been.

I shut my eyes. I heard him call, ‘Pret!’ as I had heard him call it a thousand times, a hundred thousand times. I heard him call, ‘Hup!’ and I heard the horrid nauseous ‘oooh!’ of the crowd and then the slap of firm grip on moving flesh as he caught the flyer, and then the ecstatic explosion of applause.

I should not have come. I turned and pushed my way past a man, heading back towards the door, the back of my hand tight against my mouth, vomit wet against it. As soon as I was outside, I clung to the wall and retched. I was sick as a wet puppy. And between each bout of sickness I heard again, Jack’s gay call of, ‘Pret!’ and then, ‘Hup!’ as if he had never called a girl off the pedestal bar to fling her…to fling her…

‘And so my lords, ladies and gentlemen, that concludes the show tonight. We are here until Tuesday! Please come again and tell your friends that you will always command a warm welcome from Robert Gower’s Amazing Aerial and Equestrian Show!’

The voice from inside the barn was Robert’s. Confident showground bawl. I would have known it anywhere. The braggish joy in his tone hit my belly like neat gin. I wiped my gloved hand around my mouth and went to the doorway and looked in.

People were coming out, well pleased with the show. One woman jostled me and then saw the cut and cloth of my riding habit and bobbed a curtsey and begged my pardon. I did not even see her. My eyes were fixed on the ring, a small circle of white wood shavings inside a circle of hay bales. In the plumb centre was Robert Gower, arms outstretched after his bow, dressed as I had seen him at that first show, in his smart red jacket and his brilliant white breeches, his linen fine, his boots polished. His face red and beaming in the lantern light, as if he had never ordered a girl to be taught to go to her death with a smile on her face and her hair in ribbons.

I pushed through the outgoing crowd and went, blind to their looks, towards the ring fence. I stepped over the bales and went on, right to the centre of the ring where in my own right I had stood and taken a call. Robert turned as I came towards him, his professional smile fading, his face beginning to look wary. He did not recognize me, in my fine riding habit with my long hair piled up under my hat. But he saw the quality of my clothes, and he gave a half-smile wondering what this lady might want of him. I stopped directly before him, and without warning raised my riding crop and slashed him – right cheek, left cheek – and stepped back. His hands were in fists at once, he was coming for me when he suddenly hesitated and looked more closely.

‘Meridon!’ he said. ‘It is Meridon, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ I said through my teeth. I could feel the anger and the grief rising like bile in my throat. ‘That blow was for Dandy.’

He blinked. I could see the weals from the whip growing red on his cheek. The people in the crowd behind me were murmuring, those at the doorway had turned back, trying to hear our low-voiced exchange.

Robert looked quickly around, fearing scandal. ‘What the devil is with you?’ he demanded, angry at the blow, his hand to his cheek. ‘And where the hell have you been? Whose clothes are they? And how dare you strike me?’

‘Dare?’ I spat out at him. ‘I dare strike you. When you killed her, when you let your whoreson murdering son kill her? And then you go on as if nothing had happened at all?’

Robert’s hand went from his red cheek to his forehead. ‘Dandy?’ he said wonderingly.

At her name something broke inside me. The tears tumbled out of my eyes and my voice choked as the words spilled out. ‘She did as she was told!’ I shouted. ‘David told her. “Let the catcher to his job,” he said. “You trust him to catch you. You throw the trick, let the catcher do the catching.”’

Robert nodded, his hand on the long ponies’ whip was shaking. ‘Aye, Meridon,’ he said. ‘Aye, I know. But what’s this to anything? An accident can happen. He caught her on that trick, we both saw him catch her. Then she slipped out of his hands.’

‘He threw her,’ I shouted.

He gasped and the blood drained from his face until the marks of the riding crop were livid streaks on his yellowish cheeks.

‘He threw her against the wall,’ I said, sparing him nothing. ‘He caught her perfectly and then as they swung back he threw her. He threw her out, beyond the safety net, against the back wall and broke her neck. She smashed into that wall, and was dead before I could hold her. She was dead while I still heard her scream. She was dead like a broken doll. He broke her.’

Robert looked like a man struck dumb of apoplexy, his eyes started, his mouth was blue.

‘My Jack…’ he whispered to himself. Then he looked at me again. ‘Why?’ he asked, and his voice was like a little whipped child.

‘She was pregnant,’ I said wearily. ‘She hoped to catch him, carrying his baby, your grandson. He did no worse than you, when you left your wife on the road. He’s your son right enough.’

Robert blinked rapidly, several times. I saw him choke a little and swallow down the sour taste in his mouth.

‘He killed her,’ he said softly. ‘She was carrying his child, and she’s dead.’

I looked at him and felt no pity for him as his plans and his pride tumbled around him. I looked at him with hot hatred, staring out of eyes which were dry again. ‘Oh aye,’ I said. ‘She is dead. And I’m dead too.’

I turned on my heel and left him, left him alone in the ring under the gently swinging trapeze, with the two marks of a whip cut on his pale face and his mouth trembling. I walked through the crowd which had gathered at the doorway, craning their necks to see the scene. They were pointing like that crowd had pointed in Selsey, all those lifetimes ago. I found Sea where he was tethered and looked around for a gate to use as a mounting block.

‘Here,’ a voice said and I blinked the haze from my eyes and saw two calloused hands clasped ready for my boot. It was Will Tyacke, standing beside Sea, waiting for my return.

I nodded and let him throw me up into the saddle. I turned Sea’s head for home and rode off without waiting for him. In a few seconds I heard his horse trotting and he came alongside me, without a word. I glanced at him. His face was impassive, I did not know if he had seen me in the ring – but I could be sure he would hear all about it next market-day. I did not know if he had been in earshot of my anguished shout at Robert, if he had heard her name, if he had heard my name of Meridon.

But no one ever knew anything by looking at Will. The glance he gave me back was as discrete as stone. But his brown eyes were filled with pity.

‘Back to Havering?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ I said. I was as desolate as a chrysallis after the butterfly has flown. A little dry dessicated thing which has outlived its time and can tumble over and over and crumble to dust. ‘Nowhere else for me to go,’ I said quietly.

He did not drop behind me, like a groom guarding his mistress as he might have done, given that he was as angry with me as he had ever been with anybody in his life; but he rode beside me as if we were equals. And in the empty heartbroken hollows of myself I was glad of his company and felt less alone as we rode up the drive to Havering Hall and the stars came out unseen above the dark canopy of the trees.

‘Thank you,’ I said as we reached the stables and the lad came out to take Sea. My throat was sore. I must have screamed at Robert, back there in the ring.

He turned his gaze on me as dark as a magician. ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Don’t marry him. It won’t hurt to wait a little.’

The yard was very quiet, the lad at my horse’s head stood still, stroking Sea’s white nose.

Will nodded. ‘The pain will fade,’ he said. ‘You will be less desolate in time.’

I shook my head, I even found a slight unconvincing smile. ‘No,’ I said huskily. ‘I never was very happy, even before I lost her. I don’t expect much joy now.’

He leaned forward and with his hardened dirty hand he touched my cheek, and my forehead, smoothing the tense hot skin, rubbing at my temples with roughened gentle fingers. Then, before I knew what he was doing he took my face in both his hands and kissed me, one soft kiss, full on the lips as confident as an acknowledged lover.

‘Good luck then, Sarah,’ he said. ‘You can always walk away from them all, you know.’

I didn’t pull away from his touch. I closed my eyes and let him do as he would with me. It made no difference at all. I put my hands up and closed my fingers around his wrists and held him, held his hands against my cheeks and looked into his eyes.

‘I wish to God I was dead,’ I said to him.

We stood there for a moment, in silence. Then Sea shifted restlessly and our grip broke. The lad at Sea’s head reached up for me and jumped me down from the saddle. Will stayed unmoving on his horse, watched me walk across the yard, the water trough shining like ice in the moonlight, watched the yellow lamplight from the house spill out in a square on the cobbles as I opened the back door, and then watched me close the door behind me and heard me shoot the bolts.

The next day we left for London, so Lady Clara’s spies had not time to tell her of the show, and of the young lady who looked like me, but who answered to another name.

We travelled heavy. I thought of the old days, of one wagon carrying everything a family of five would need. Of the first season when we travelled with bedding for four, costume changes, saddlery and a scenery backdrop all loaded in two wagons. Lady Clara and I travelled in the Havering carriage, Lord Peregrine rode alongside for his own amusement. Behind us came the baggage coach with all our clothes and with Lord Peregrine’s valet and two maids. Behind that came a wagon with various essentials necessary to Lady Clara’s comfort: everything from sheets to the door-knocker, and either side of this little cavalcade ranged outriders – stable lads and footmen, armed for this journey with blunderbuss and bludgeon in case highwaymen might stop us and rob us. By the end of the first hour, bored and restless, I heartily hoped they would.

I was a bad travelling companion for Lady Clara. She had a book to read but I was still unable to read anything but the simplest of stories and the jogging of the chaise meant I could not put my finger under a line and follow it. I had with me some of the accounts of Wideacre in the days of my mama Julia, but I could not read her copperplate script and Lady Clara would not trouble herself to help me. And to my surprise, and then increasing discomfort, I found I was sickly with the movement of the carriage.

I did not believe it when I started to feel headachy and dizzy. Me, who had spent all my life on the driver’s seat of a wagon, or eating or dozing behind! But it was true. The chaise was slung on thick leather straps and it bounced like a landlady’s bubbies, and it swayed from side to side too. A great lolloping pig of a chaise, lined with sickly blue. I would have blessed the highway-man who stopped us. I would have been out of the chaise in a moment and begged him a ride on his horse.

‘You’re pale,’ Lady Clara commented, looking up from her book.

‘I’m sickly,’ I said. ‘The chaise makes me feel ill.’

She nodded. ‘Don’t say “sickly”, say “unwell”,’ she said, and reached for her reticule. She pulled out a little bottle of smelling salts and handed it over to me. I had never seen such a thing before.

‘Is it drink?’ I asked, holding it to the light and trying to see.

‘No!’ said Lady Clara with her rippling laugh. ‘It’s smelling salts. You hold it under your nose and smell it.’

I took the stopper off and held the little bottle under my nose. I gave a hearty sniff and then gasped with the shock of it. My head reeled, my nostrils stung.

Lady Clara rocked on her seat. ‘Oh, Sarah!’ she said. ‘You are a little savage! You wave it under your nose and breathe normally. I thought it might help.’

I stoppered the bottle again and handed it back to her. I fumbled in my pocket for my handkerchief and rubbed my sore nose and mopped my eyes.

‘I should feel better if I could ride,’ I said.

‘Out of the question,’ Lady Clara said, and that was the end of the conversation.

I shut my eyes against the swaying dizziness of the movement, and after a little while I must have slept, for the next thing I knew the wheels of the coach were squeaking and banging on cobblestones. I woke with a jump of shock and all round me was the bustle of the city and the shouts of the porters. The smell was appalling and the noise was as bad as Salisbury on market day, and it went on for mile after mile. I could not believe there were so many people in the world, so many carriages, so many paupers, beggars, hucksters, tradesmen.

‘London!’ Lady Clara said with a sigh of relief which showed how hard her stay in the country had been for her.

I nodded but instead of excitement I felt only dread. I would rather have done anything in the world than be where I was, Miss Sarah Lacey, come to town for my first Season as a young lady, driving up to the Haverings’ town house with little Miss Juliet in the nursery and the newly wedded Lady Maria de Montrey coming to see her mama in the morning.

‘You will not dislike my daughters,’ Lady Clara said to me, her blue eyes veiled as if she could guess my thoughts as I grew paler and quieter.

‘No,’ I said without conviction.

‘You will not dislike them, because they will mean nothing to you,’ she said equably. ‘Juliet is an ignorant schoolgirl, a little forward for her age, quite pretty. Maria is a little vixen. I married her well before her husband discovered the sharpness of her tongue. She ought to thank me for that but she will not.’ Lady Clara gleamed over the top of her fan. ‘She will hate you,’ she said candidly, with a smile.

I hesitated. Sarah Lacey the young lady was in conflict with Meridon the gypsy. Meridon won. ‘I hate cat fights,’ I said bluntly. ‘I don’t want her scratching at me. It will be bad enough without that.’

Lady Clara smiled mischievously. ‘Don’t say “cat fights”, Sarah,’ she said. ‘And don’t be dull. It will not be bad. It is your coming-out into your rightful society. And you may rely on me to curb the worst excesses of my daughter’s malice.’

I hesitated. ‘You won’t always be there,’ I said. ‘And Perry…’

Lady Clara’s fan flicked the dusty air. ‘Perry is as afraid of Maria as he is of me,’ she said. ‘He’ll be no help to you, my dear. So I will always be there. Maria is selfish enough and conceited enough to try to make a fool of you in public. I shan’t permit that. You will do well enough with me.’

‘I’m grateful,’ I said. There was a world of irony in my voice but Lady Clara chose not to hear it.

Instead she leaned forward. ‘We’re nearly here,’ she said. ‘This is Grosvenor Street, and here is our street, Brook Street, and here, on the corner, is our house.’

She spoke with pride, I stared in surprise at it. It was a handsome white house with a flight of four shallow steps down to the pavement, a great army of black iron railings around it, and a heavy triangular carving of stone over the doorway. They must have been waiting for us, for as the carriage drew up the double doors were flung open and two footmen in livery and half a dozen maids in black dresses and white aprons came out and stood in a row up the steps. Lady Clara put her hand to her bonnet and cast a swift look over me.

‘Straighten your cape, Sarah,’ she said abruptly. ‘And don’t smile at them.’

I nodded and tried to look as haughty and as disdainful as she did. Then they opened the carriage door and let down the steps and Lady Clara glided into the house nodding as the maids rippled down in a curtsey on either side of her, and I followed her in.

I was not awkward then. I was not gawkish. I had stood in a show ring before now and been stared at till the crowds had their full pennyworth. A row of housemaids would not discomfort me. I nodded impartially at their bowed capped heads, and followed Lady Clara indoors.

It was a grand lovely hall. If Lady Clara had not shot me a quick frown I should have gasped. The stairs came curling down the wall on our right, broad and shallow with a fancy curved banister. The wall behind it was crusty with plasterwork making picture frames and niches for white statues – indecent, I thought they were, but I barely had time for more than a glimpse. Inside the square gilt plaster frames were painted pictures of people wrapped up in coloured sheets and rolling in waves or lying about in woods. There was a door on our left to a room which would overlook the street but Lady Clara walked past it and followed the butler up the stairs to a parlour immediately above it, facing the street.

He threw open the door. ‘We lit a fire in the parlour, my lady, thinking you might be chilled or tired from your drive,’ he said. ‘Would you like some tea m’lady? Or mulled wine?’

I stepped into the room behind her. It was the most extraordinary room I had ever seen in my life. Every wall was done up fancy with great mouldings and painted so that every wall was like a frame for a picture, or for the four tall windows. The fireplace was so covered with swags and curls and ribbons that you wondered they could ever find where to light it in the mornings. It was very grand. It was very imposing. I missed the simple comfort of Wideacre the moment I was over the threshold.

‘Dust,’ Lady Clara said walking into the parlour stripping off her gloves and handing them to the waiting maid.

The butler, the Havering man who had set off early yesterday night from Sussex to be here to greet us, shot a furious glance at the housekeeper, a London woman I had not seen before.

Lady Clara sat down before the fire and put her feet up on the brass fender. She held out her hands to the blaze and looked at them all, parlourmaid, housekeeper, butler, without a smile.

‘Dust on the outside windowsills,’ she said. ‘Get them scrubbed. And bring me my post and a cup of mulled wine at once. And bring a cup for Miss Lacey and Lord Perry as well.’

The butler murmured an apology and backed from the room. The housekeeper and the maid flicked out shutting the door behind them. Lady Clara gleamed her malicious smile at me.

‘There’s never any call to be pleasant to servants, Sarah,’ she said. ‘There are thousands who would give their right arms for a good place in a London household. Treat them firmly and sack them when you need to. There’s no profit in doing more.’

‘Yes, Lady Clara,’ I said, and I pulled out a chair from the fireside and sat down beside her.

The door opened and Perry came in with the parlourmaid behind him carrying a tray.

‘’Llo, Mama,’ he said pleasantly. ‘Sarah!’ He waved the maid to the table and flapped her from the room and handed us our cups himself.

‘Load of letters,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Mostly for you, Mama. Half a dozen for me. Bills, I suppose.’

He handed the tray of Lady Clara’s letters over to her and watched her as she sipped her drink and started to slit them open with an ivory paper knife. While her attention was distracted he reached deep into an inside pocket of his jacket and brought out a dark little flask and slopped a measure of some clear liquid into his drink. He winked at me, as roguish as a lad, and then sipped at his mulled wine with greater appetite.

‘Invitations,’ Lady Clara said with pleasure. ‘Look, Sarah, your name on a gilt engraved card!’

She handed me a stiff white card and I put my fingers under the words and spelled out slowly: ‘The Hon. Mrs Thaverley requests the pleasure of the Dowager Lady Clara Havering and Miss Sarah Lacey to a ball…’

‘Lord! She mustn’t do that in public, Mama!’ Perry said, suddenly alarmed.

Lady Clara looked up from her letters and saw me, tortuously spelling out words.

‘Good God no!’ she said. ‘Sarah, you must never try to read in public until you can do so without putting your finger under the words and moving your lips.’

I looked from one to the other of them. I had been so proud that I had been able to make out at all what the invitation said. But it was not a skill I had learned, it was a social embarrassment. Whatever I did it was never good enough for high society.

‘I won’t,’ I promised tightly. ‘Lady Clara, may I go to my room and take my hat off?’

She looked sharply at me and then her gaze softened. ‘Yes, of course,’ she said. ‘I had forgotten you felt ill. Go and lie down and I will send your maid to call you in time for you to dress for dinner.’

She nodded me to pull the bell rope by the mantelpiece, and I looked at the clock. It said three o’clock.

‘We will not dine for hours yet!’ Lady Clara said airily. ‘We keep town hours now! We will dine at six today, even later when we start entertaining. Mrs Gilroy can bring a slice of bread and cake up to you in your room.’

‘Thank you,’ I said. Peregrine held the door for me and then followed me out. The parlourmaid appeared from the back of the long corridor where I guessed the servants’ stairs were, dipped a curtsey to both of us and waited. Perry’s gaze was blurred, he had been drinking as he rode and the gin in the mulled wine had added to his haziness.

‘I’ll fetch the cake,’ he offered. ‘We’ll have a little picnic. It can be like it was in the woods that first day when I thought you were a stable lad, and we said we’d be friends.’

‘All right,’ I said desolately.

I followed the maid down the corridor trailing my new bonnet by the ribbons so that the flowers on the side brushed on the thick pile of the carpet. The maid threw open a panelled door and stood to one side. It was a spacious pretty bedroom which I guessed had belonged to the vixen Maria before her marriage. There was a white and gold bed and matching dressing-table with a mirror atop and a stool before it. There was a hanging cupboard for dresses and cloaks. There was a window which was painted tight shut and looked out over the street where carriages went to and fro and errand boys and footmen sauntered. It smelled of indoors as if clean winds never blew in London. I wrinkled my nose at the stale scent of perfume and hair-powder. I could not imagine how I would ever manage to sleep there. It would be like living in a prison.

There was a great crash outside my door as Perry stumbled against it, tray in hands. I crossed the room and opened it and he weaved unsteadily in. The open bottle of wine had tipped over and was rolling on the tray, wine streaming out over plum cake, fairy cakes, little biscuits and slices of bread and butter. The little dish of jam had skidded to the back of the tray and was sticking, unnoticed, to his waistcoat. The tray was awash with red wine, the food sodden.

Perry dumped the lot on the hearthrug before the fire, quite unaware.

‘Now we can be comfortable,’ he said with satisfaction.

I giggled. ‘Yes we can,’ I said. And we toasted each other in the remainder of the wine and we ate soggy plum cake and redstained biscuits, and then we curled up together like drunken puppies and dozed before the fire until the maid tapped on the door and told me it was time to dress for dinner.