Wideacre

8

The wedding night was all that Harry and I had planned, with the added excitement for me of deceiving Celia who was sleeping next door. Harry had to hold his hand over my mouth to smother my cries of pleasure, and that hint of his violence and my helplessness excited us even more. When his own time came he had to thrust his face into the soft pillows to muffle his long, low groans. Afterwards we lay in silence and peace and I did not trouble to creep back to my own room.

The Golden Fleece at Portsmouth is near the harbour walls and as we drifted into sleep I could hear the wash of the sea as the waves smacked the fortifications. The smell of the salt air made me feel that we were already on our journey and Wideacre hopes and Wideacre fears were far away from us. Harry sighed heavily and turned over, but I lay quiet in the strange room savouring the distance from home — while secure in the awareness that I had made it more my home than ever before. Unconsciously, my thoughts drifted to Ralph — the old Ralph of my girlhood — and his longing to lie with me between sheets in a clean bed. He was right to envy us. Land, and the wealth that land brings, is essential.

I lay on my back gazing clear-eyed into the darkness, listening to the waves wash against the harbour wall as if they were sighing for the touch of the land. I had Harry now, and next door Celia slept, secure in my friendship. The old nagging ache in my heart, my fear of not belonging, of not being loved, had eased. I was loved. My brother, the Squire, adored me and would come to me at the snap of my fingers. I was safe on the land. He owned the land outright and would do my bidding. But I gazed unseeing at the grey ceiling of the bedroom and knew it was not enough. I needed something beyond him, something more. I needed whatever magic had possessed him when he brought in the harvest like a living sheaf of corn himself, golden-headed, golden-skinned, tall on the mountain of wheat. When I had stepped out of the shadow of the barn I had greeted not only the man I desired but somehow something more: I greeted the god of the harvest, and when he gazed at me he saw the old dark goddess of the earth’s green fertility. When he became a man in a nightshirt, snoring softly, I lost that vision and I lost my passion too.

Of course I thought of Ralph. In all our meetings and kisses in the sunny days of caresses in hiding, the magic never left Ralph. He was always something dark from the woods. He always breathed of the magic of Wideacre. But Harry, as he said himself, could live anywhere.

I rolled on my side and cupped my body around Harry’s plump bottom ready for sleep. I could never have managed Ralph as I could control Harry. I could never have brooked a master, but I could not help a secret squirm of disdain for a man I could train as easily as a puppy. Every good rider likes a well-trained horse. But who does not enjoy the challenge of an animal whose spirit you cannot break? Harry always was, always would be, a domesticated pet. And I was something from further back, from wild days when magic still walked in the Wideacre woods. I smiled at the picture of myself as some lean, rare, green-eyed animal. Then I dozed. And then I slid deep, deep into sleep.

The bustle of the hotel woke me in plenty of time to slip through the adjoining door to my bedroom long before my maid had brought my morning cup of chocolate and hot water for washing. I could see the harbour from my bedroom and the water was a welcoming blue with fishing boats and yachts bobbing on the little waves. I was alive with anticipation and excitement, and Celia and I laughed like children as we boarded the ferry moored beside the high harbour wall.

The first few minutes were delightful. The little ship rocked so sweetly at its moorings, and the sights and smells were so new and strange. The harbourside was crowded with people selling goods to the travellers. Fruit and food to take on the journey in little baskets, little painted views of England for travellers going home to France, hundreds of little worthless pieces of trumpery made from shells or pretty pieces of glass.

Even the sight of a legless man — a wounded sailor — did not make me tremble with a sense of my danger coming closer and closer. Although I gazed in horror at the stumps of his thighs and saw how deft, how disgustingly skilful he was at swinging around on the ground — I had seen at the first sight that his hair was light-coloured and I was secure in the knowledge that in leaving Wideacre I was escaping Ralph and his slow, inexorable approach. I threw the beggar a superstitious penny, and he caught it and thanked me with a professional whine. The thought of Ralph, my lovely Ralph, reduced to poverty and squatting on pavements caught at my heart. But then I shrugged the idea aside as Celia called, ‘Look! Look! We are setting sail!’

Lithe as monkeys, the sailors had swarmed up the double masts and unfurled sheets of canvas. They tightened the ropes as the sails flapped and billowed, and amid raucous shouts and curses the bystanders on the harbourside slipped the ropes free and threw them into the boat. Celia and I shrank out of the way as the men, as wild-looking as pirates, dashed from one rope to another heaving the sails up and tying the ropes tight. The harbour wall slid away from us and the people waving seemed very small, then the ship moved out to the harbour mouth where the arms of yellow stone seemed to try to hold us for one last second to England and home. Then we bounced through the boiling waters where river and ebbing tide meet the sea and scudded out.

The sails filled with wind and stretched and thumped and the men dashed around less, which Celia and I took to be a good sign. I went to the prow and, glancing around to ensure that no one was watching, stretched myself out along the bowsprit as far as I dared, to watch the waves rushing beneath me and the sharp prow cutting into the green waters. A good hour I spent there, fascinated by the rush of the waves, but then the rocking became more and more fierce, and although it was midday, the sky darkened with the deep clouds that mean a storm on land or sea. It started to rain, and I found I was weary. I had to sit in the cabin out of the rain and the rocking was no longer pleasant and it was very tiring to see the room going up and down.

Then it was not just tiring, but unbearably horrid. I felt sure I should be well if I could be up on the deck again, and I tried to hold to the memory of the pleasure of the prow cutting through the water. But it was no good. I hated the boat, and I hated the senseless rocking of the waves and I longed with all my heart to be back on the good solid earth.

I opened the cabin door and called for my maid who should have been in the cabin opposite mine. A sudden rush of nausea sent me to the basin in my room. I was sick alone and without help, and then a jerk and a dive of the ship sent me reeling into my bunk. Everything in the cabin swayed and rocked and the unsecured bags slid from side to side and crashed into one wall and then the other. I was miserably ill, too ill even to help myself. I clung to the side of the pitching bunk and wept aloud in fear and in sickness and for help. Then I was sick again and I dropped on to the pillows which bumped horridly up and down; then I slept.

When I woke the cabin was still shifting and heaving but someone had packed away all the bags so the cramped little room seemed less nightmarish. There was a pale smell of lilies and everything was clean. I looked around for my maid, but it was Celia sitting calmly in a heaving, pitching chair and smiling at me.

‘I am so glad you are better,’ she said. ‘Do you feel well enough to take something? Some soup, or just tea?’

I could not puzzle out where I was, or what was happening. I just shook my head, my stomach churning at the thought of food.

‘Well, sleep then,’ said this strange, authoritative Celia. ‘It is the best thing you can do, and we shall soon be safe and calm in port.’

I closed my eyes, too ill to care, and slept. I woke once more to be sick, and someone held a basin for me, and deftly washed my face and hands with warm water, dried me and laid me back on the turned pillow. I dreamed it was my mother, for I knew it was not my maid. Only in the night when I woke again did I realize it was Celia nursing me.

‘Have you been here all the time?’ I asked.

‘Oh, yes,’ she said, as if nothing could be more natural. ‘Except when I was looking after Harry, of course.’

‘Is he ill, too?’ I asked wonderingly.

‘Rather worse than you, I am afraid,’ Celia said calmly. ‘But you will both be perfectly well when we reach France.’

‘Don’t you mind it, Celia?’

She smiled, and her gentle voice seemed to come from a long way away as I slid back into sleep.

‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘I am stronger than I look.’

Next time I awoke the dreadful pitching and tossing had stopped. I felt light-headed and faint, but was no longer retching. I sat up and stretched my bare feet to the floor. I felt shaky, but better already, and tiptoed to the adjoining door to Harry’s cabin without holding the chair for support. The door opened without a sound and I stood silently in the doorway.

Celia was standing by Harry’s bunk with a bowl of soup in one hand, and her arm around Harry, around my Harry’s shoulders. I watched as he sipped at the soup like a sickly infant, and then Celia settled him back on the pillow.

‘Better?’ she asked, and her voice was infinitely tender. Harry clasped her hand.

‘My dear,’ he said, ‘you have been so kind, so sweet to me.’

Celia smiled and smoothed the hair from his forehead in an intimate, confident gesture.

‘Oh, how silly you are, Harry,’ she said. ‘I am your wife. Of course I care for you when you are ill. I promised to love you in sickness and in health. I have been happy to care for you, and for dear Beatrice, too.’

I watched in horror as Harry took Celia’s hand from his hair and held it gently to his lips. And she, the cold, shy Celia, bent and kissed him on the forehead. Then she drew the curtains around the bed. I stepped back, silent on my bare feet, and closed the door behind me. Celia’s confidence, Celia’s tenderness to Harry, amazed and alarmed me. I felt once more the knife thrust of jealousy, but also the fear of exclusion from the pale of the married state. For courage, for the reassurance of my beauty, I turned to the small mirror nailed on the wooden wall of the cabin. I was white and sickly looking, and my skin was like wax.

Any ideas I had of striding into Harry’s cabin and raging at him or even of slinking into his bunk beside him were instantly dismissed. If he was feeling at all as I did, he would welcome neither a quarrel nor a passionate reconciliation.

I dressed, a puzzled frown still on my face. For the first time now we were unlike ourselves in illness, and unlike ourselves off our land. It struck me how little I shared with Harry. Away from Wideacre, away from my obsession, and too tired to be lovers, we were strangers. If I had gone into his cabin for anything other than a scene of passion, I should not have known what to say. It would never occur to me to order soup for him, or to feed him as if he was some disgusting, overgrown baby, or to draw his curtains so he could sleep. I had never nursed any invalid; I had never even played with dolls in my childhood, and I had neither instinct nor interest in the kind of lovemaking that consists of gentle caresses and kindly courtesies.

Celia blooming with a sense of her importance and Harry expansive and grateful for her nursing were an odd couple indeed, but I could not see there was any way to check their new relationship.

Nor did I, once I was up on deck watching a beautifully steady horizon, think it necessary to spoil Celia’s moment of glory. If she liked to nurse Harry and me when we were hideous with seasickness, it was not a job I envied. And if Harry kissed her hand in gratitude, and thought of her drudgery kindly, well that did me no harm either. As the wind whipped my cheeks into a rosy colour, and my loose hair into curls, my hopes rose too. Here was France, and a long easy holiday with no eyes to watch us, no ears to listen to us, and only naive, silly, slavish Celia to deceive.

Harry and Celia joined me on deck, and I even forgave their interlaced arms — especially when I saw that my strong and healthy lover was leaning on Celia for support. He was pale and listless and smiled at me only when I assured him that we would be disembarked in under an hour. But I was no longer anxious. As soon as Harry was well and his appetite restored — for his dinner and for everything else — he would be mine for the taking.

We dined and slept that night in Cherbourg, and in the morning Harry was perfectly well. I did not complain, but I could not eat my breakfast for a renewed bout of seasickness. The dizziness had gone, but as soon as I lifted my head from the pillow I felt sick and extremely unlike myself. The others breakfasted on coffee and rolls, while I strolled outside in the fresh air of the garden of the inn, and watched them loading up our post-chaise. I somehow dreaded the long road to Paris cooped up inside a swaying carriage, and could scarcely raise a smile in response to Harry when he handed me up the steps.

My seasickness stayed with me, far from the sight of the sea, far from the smell of the boat. Damn it, it stayed with me every morning along the road to Paris, every sunlit Parisian morning when Harry hammered on the door and called to me to come riding in the bois, every morning of our journey south.

I lifted my head from retching into the window box one morning and admitted miserably to myself the fact I had been avoiding. I was with child.

We were three days’ journey from Paris, and in the heart of the French countryside and I stared out at a sea of roofs of a pretty old town and breathed air too hot for an English autumn. Then I smelled baking and some dreadful hint of spice or garlic too, and I retched again, but my belly was empty and nothing came.

Tears had squeezed from my swollen eyelids and I felt them cold on my cheeks as if I were weeping in sorrow. The pretty blue-slated roofs, the tall old church tower, the bluish horizon, all shimmering in a comfortable haze of heat, which had no power to warm me. I was with child. And I was afraid.

We were driving on that day; the others would be waiting for me below. I had lied and said I had forgotten something in my room to escape their eyes when I felt the flush coming to my face and my sickness start. Now I had to go downstairs, step into a post-chaise and spend nearly all day swaying and rocking on the rotten French roads and listen to Celia reading from her damned guidebook, and hear Harry snoring as he always, always did. And to no one could I reach out a quick hand of desperate need and say, ‘Help me! I am in trouble!’

Every morning when I had felt so strange I had secretly known. When I had failed to bleed at the usual time, I had blamed the excitement of the wedding and the journey. But I had known in my heart for at least a week, perhaps two. I simply could not face the thought. And, more like Harry and Mama than my usual clear-headed self, I had hidden the idea from myself. But it came back to me. Every sunny morning when I woke ill and anxious. Through the day while I smiled at Harry and chatted to Celia, I could forget and reassure myself with an easy lie that it had all been a reaction to the travelling, that I was well again. And at night, when I was in Harry’s bed and he thrust deep inside me, I could hope, in a little secret place in my head, that our clinging passion would make me bleed. But each morning was the same. And, more frightening, every morning was worse until I feared Celia’s loving sharpness would notice and I would fail in my fatigue and loneliness to keep this secret well hidden. That my need for help and my need for love, for someone, anyone, to say, ‘Do not fear. You need not face this alone,’ would overcome my good sense.

For I was very much afraid, and very much alone, and I dared not think what was going to happen to me.

I took my handkerchief out of my reticule as my excuse and went downstairs. Celia was waiting in the hall while Harry paid the bill. She smiled when she saw me and I could feel my face muscles were too stiff to reply.

‘Are you all right, Beatrice?’ she asked, noting my pallor.

‘Perfectly,’ I said shortly, and she took my abruptness as a rebuff and said no more, although I was longing to weep and throw myself into her arms and ask for her help to save me from this threat over my future.

I had no idea what I was going to do.

I climbed into the coach as if I were going to my death, and stared blankly out of the window to discourage Celia’s chatter. Counting on my fingers under the shield of my reticule I calculated that I was two months pregnant and that I could expect my confinement in May.

I stared in impotent hatred at the sunny French landscape, at the squat little houses and the dusty well-dug gardens. This foreign land, this strange place, seemed all part of the nightmare of my predicament. I was mortally afraid that the worst would happen and that I would die here in a shameful childbirth and never see my lovely home again. And my body would be buried in one of these horrid, crowded graveyards and not at Acre church where I belonged. A little sob escaped me and Celia looked up from her book. I felt her eyes on me but I did not turn my head. She put her little hand out and touched my shoulder with a gentle pat, like a caress one would make to an unhappy child. I did not respond but that token gesture comforted me a little and I blinked away the tears.

For two or three days of that miserable journey I rode silent in the carriage. Harry noticed nothing. When he was bored he rode on the box to see the view better, or hired a horse and rode for pleasure. Celia watched me with alert tenderness, ready to speak or be silent, but did not intrude on my brooding wretchedness. And I said nothing, kept my face serene when Harry was by, and gazed blankly out of the window when we were alone.

By the time we arrived at Bordeaux, I was over the first of the shock; my mind had stopped reeling like a drunkard. My first thought was to lose this little encumbrance and I told Harry I wanted a hard day’s riding to shake the fidgets out of me. He looked doubtful at the stables when I picked out a wicked-looking stallion and insisted on a lady’s saddle. They all advised against it. They all were right. Not even in the prime of health could I have stayed on that horse and he threw me in the first ten seconds in the stable yard. They rushed to help me to my feet and I was able to smile and say I was not hurt, I merely wanted to sit still. I sat and waited. Nothing seemed to have happened. I returned to my hotel room and waited for the rest of the day. The warm sunshine of the French autumn poured through the window and I scowled at it in an aversion for everything fruitful and strong. The pretty sunlit room was too small; the walls seemed to be closing in on me. The air was unbreathable and France itself stank. I snatched up my bonnet and ran downstairs. Harry had hired a landaulet for our stay in the town and I ordered it to be called to the door as Celia came slowly downstairs after me.

‘Are you going to drive alone, Beatrice?’ she asked, surprised.

‘Yes,’ I said tersely. ‘I need some fresh air.’

‘Shall I come with you?’ she asked. This non-committal tone had irritated me excessively in the early weeks of the trip, but I had learned soon that it was not that Celia lacked opinions — she simply desired to please me.

Her questions — ‘Shall I come to the theatre?’ ‘Shall I come to dinner with you and Harry?’ — meant simply what they said — ‘Would you prefer my company, or would you rather be alone?’ — and Harry and I soon found out that it did not offend Celia whether we refused, or accepted.

‘Don’t come,’ I said. ‘Make tea for Harry when he comes in. You know how he likes it, and the servants here cannot make it. I shall not be long.’

Celia acquiesced with a smile and watched me leave. I kept my face calm as I passed the windows of the hotel but, once out of sight, I dropped the little veil on my bonnet and wept behind it.

I was lost, lost, lost. And I could not think, I could not make myself think, what to do. My first thought had been to tell Harry and, between the two of us, concoct some solution. But some wiser voice in my head cautioned me to wait and not to panic into a confession I could not retract.

If I had been at home, in the old days, my first visit would have been to Meg, Ralph’s white witch of a mother. But I dismissed the memory of her with a shrug. I had known, as every country child knows, that girls gone into service, girls betrothed to the wrong man, or girls seduced by men already married, could rid themselves of their difficulties with the help of women like Meg and some secret, semi-poisonous plants. But never had I known what these were — nor would I have known how to use them.

Undoubtedly this sleepy French market town, like any other, would house a wise woman who could advise me. But I should not be able to find her without the whole inn, and thus every passing English visitor, hearing of the gossip. Short of a lucky, natural accident — and God knows I had terrified Harry and myself and been bumped and bruised but got no further forward — I was stuck with this growing weed.

I directed the coachman to drive on when he paused, waiting for instructions.

‘Go on, go on,’ I said fiercely. ‘Out to the country, just keep driving.’ He nodded his head and cracked his whip in obedience to the eccentric young Englishwoman. The carriage rolled out of the town and the houses gave way to little cottages surrounded by small gardens of dust. Then we were beyond the town limits, in the fields, the rows and rows of vines stretching for ever to the blue sky.

I stared miserably at the gentle, hilly landscape, so unlike the skyline of my lovely Wideacre. Whereas our hills roll up, part covered with beech coppices and crowned with caps of smooth sweet turf, these hills are terraced and walled every inch of the way with the monotonous vines broken only by peasant plots. It may be a pleasant country to visit, to bowl along a dusty road under a hot un-English sun, but I would not choose to be poor in France. Our people are far from wealthy — I would be overpaying them if they were — but they do not scrape and scratch a living from dry earth as the peasants do in France. Harry and I had learned much, driving round and talking to the leading landowners, though it was striking how few of them knew anything of their lands beyond the château gardens. But above all else we had reassured ourselves that the combination of new agricultural methods with a reliable labouring force was the way ahead for Wideacre.

A sudden bolt of homesickness shot through me and I thought with longing of my house and my land, and how I wished to be there now, and not in this strange and arid country with my dresses growing tighter around my breasts. Then the pain of homesickness suddenly crystallized into a thought in my mind so bright and so brilliant that I sat up with a yelp, and the driver reined in again to see if I was ready to go home. I waved him on and fell back in my seat, my hands instinctively clutching my slightly rounded belly. The child in there — this beloved baby that I had thought of only seconds ago as a growing weed — was the heir to Wideacre. If it were a boy — and I knew with certainty that it was a boy — then he was the future Master of Wideacre and my place there was assured for ever. Mistress in all but name of those most precious acres, and the mother of the son of the Squire. My baby would be the Master.

At once I felt different. My resentment melted away. I should hardly care for this discomfort, or even the pains, because these would be caused by the precious son growing and growing until he could be born into his rightful place.

Again I thought of telling Harry and gambling on his pride at the conception of a son and heir. But again, my instincts warned me to tread carefully. Harry was mine, very much mine, and this trip had proved it. Every evening as darkness fell and they brought candles to our rooms, or lanterns if we were dining outside, his eyes would turn to me and he would see nothing but the gleam of my hair in the flickering light, and the expression on my face. Then Celia would quietly excuse herself and leave us alone. The evenings and the nights were mine, and mine alone; and Harry and I pleasured each other for long hours and then fell asleep in each other’s arms. The days, however, I had to share him with Celia, and I noted, but could not prevent, the birth of an easy, affectionate intimacy.

Ever since the time on that cursed boat, Celia and Harry had established a way of being easy together. She loved to be of use to Harry, to comfort him when he was tired, or to rearrange the rooms in our various hotels so they were elegant, yet comfortable. The painfully shy Celia, with her halting command of the French language, would sally down to the strange kitchens to confront the master chef with demands for tea. She would stay there, ignoring the outrage of the French domestics, until she had watched them make it exactly to Harry’s liking.

She was amusingly protective of the man I knew to be all my own, and I permitted her this area of activity as a harmless hobby and one that freed me from the chores of housekeeping. It was Celia who packed and repacked the linen and the bedding every time we moved from one hotel to another. It was Celia who sought out tailors, laundries, bootmakers, florists and all the services we needed. It was Celia who repaired with exquisite small stitches a tear in Harry’s embroidered waistcoat, and it was Celia’s task to serve Harry like a maid while it was mine to amuse and delight him like an equal.

She was more confident after the tense night in Paris when they had become, finally, man and wife. Harry and I had jointly chosen the evening when he was to do his duty by her, and I had ensured that he regarded it as a disagreeable task. I had worn a low-cut dress for our outing to the opera and to supper afterwards. I had cast off my mourning with my first step on foreign soil, and that evening I shimmered in green like a young silver birch tree. My hair was thickly powdered white, and it showed my skin the colour of clear, dry wine. Not an eye in the hotel moved from me as Harry, Celia and I went to our table. Celia, beside me in pale pink, was eclipsed.

Harry drank heavily and roared with laughter at my witty talk. He was as tense as a wire and his nervousness took him to the edge of insensitivity towards Celia’s feelings. She looked more like a prisoner on the way to the guillotine than a bride. She was sickly white in her girlish dress, spoke not a word and ate not a thing all evening. I sent Harry in to her bedroom certain that nothing could be done further to guarantee a pleasureless period of duty and pain for both.

He was even quicker than I expected. He came to my room in his dressing-gown with his night-shirt still stained with her blood. ‘It is done,’ he had said briefly and rolled into my bed. We slept together in warm companionship — as if I were comforting him for some secret sorrow. But in the morning, when the first grey light of the Paris dawn crept through my shutters, and the noise of the water-carts on the cobbles outside woke us both, we made love.

But it was a measure of Celia’s new maturity — which I noted without comment — that not one word about that night of pain did I hear from her. Little confiding Celia told me nothing. Her intense loyalty to her husband — Harry the friend, Harry the invalid, and even Harry the legal rapist — kept her silent. She said nothing. She neither speculated, nor directly commented, on how long Harry and I sat together in the evening after she had retired. When she found Harry’s bed untouched one careless morning when we had overslept, she said no words, assuming Harry had fallen asleep in his chair, or perhaps privately speculated that he was with a woman. She was the perfect wife for us. I expect she was deeply unhappy.

But it was Harry’s response to her that made me pause. He had seen, as I had, Celia’s unswerving loyalty to himself, to me, and to our family name. I saw his appreciation of her tentative services to his comfort. I noted his meticulous courtesy to her and the growth of confidence and trust between them. There was no way I could stop this short of a battle that could only expose me. But also there was no reason why I should. Celia could have the hand-kissing, and the courteous rising when she entered the room, Harry’s sweet smile at breakfast, and his absent-minded politeness. I would have Harry’s passion and Wideacre. And I knew from myself, and from Ralph, that sexuality and Wideacre were the most important things there could be in any person’s life. As crucial as the keystone in the old Norman arch over the gate to the walled garden.

So though I was sure of Harry, the grey area of his feelings for little Celia made me pause before telling him I had conceived an heir. I shut my sunshade with a snap and poked the driver in the back. ‘Drive home,’ I said, ungraciously, and watched him clumsily back the pair into a dusty side road, and turn them for the hotel.

What I needed was some way of giving birth to the child and rearing it in absolute secrecy to give me time to bring Harry around to the idea of a son and heir conceived by me with him. I had to conceal the pregnancy, give birth in secret and find some trustworthy woman to care for the child until I could persuade Harry to produce the little boy before Celia as his son and heir and insist that she care for him.

I nibbled the end of my glove, and watched the vineyards slip past. The peasants were harvesting the grapes along the long rows of gnarled vines. Great, heavy black grapes that make the deep lovely Bordeaux wine. We would drink some this evening at dinner. They drink it young at this time of the year and the taste of it sparkles on your tongue. But there would be little pleasure for me at dinner, or at any other time, if I could not crack this kernel of conflict. First, Harry might simply refuse outright. Or he might agree and then be seized later by a fit of conscience and refuse to force his bastard on Celia. There were bastards in noble households up and down the land, but none that I knew had been imposed on the wife as an heir. Celia, alternatively, might refuse to accept the child, and she would certainly enjoy the support of my mother (not to mention her own family if she told tales). Then everyone would want to know where the baby had come from, and I could not trust Harry’s abilities to sustain deception.

The problem of introducing a bouncing toddler into Wideacre as the new heir seemed insuperable, and while I worried at it a little flame of anger was lit within me again. It seemed that, like me, my son would find his way barred. But like me he would succeed. I should see him at the head of the Wideacre table, and with his foot on Wideacre land, whatever it cost.

In the meantime, I needed some kind, stupid, maternal woman who would care for a newborn baby and prepare him for the life he was to lead, and the place he had to fill. The landaulet stopped and I was handed down in a daydream. I had to find, in this strange land where I spoke not one word of the language, some gentle, stupid, loving woman to rear a cuckoo. I stood, poking the tip of my parasol into the ground at my feet and my sister-in-law, gentle, loving, stupid Celia, came down the steps of the hotel to greet me — and the solution to all my problems broke upon me like autumn sunshine in a thunderstorm.

‘Are you feeling better?’ she asked sweetly. I drew her hand under my arm as we walked up the steps.

‘I am so much better,’ I said, confidentially. ‘And I have something to tell you, Celia, and I need your help. Come to my room and we can talk before dinner.’

‘Of course,’ said Celia, willing and flattered. ‘But what do you need to tell me? You know I will help you in any way I can, Beatrice.’

I smiled lovingly at her, and stepped back gracefully to let her precede me into the hotel. After all, what was one gesture of precedence now, when I should, with her loyal and generous assistance, displace her, and any child of hers, for ever?

As soon as I had shut the door to my bedroom I composed my face into a solemn expression, drew Celia down beside me on a chaise-longue and put my hand in hers. I turned a sad, sweet gaze on her and felt my green cat’s eyes fill with tears as I said, ‘Celia, I am in the most dreadful trouble, and I know not which way to turn.’

Her brown eyes widened and the colour went from her cheeks.

‘I am ruined, Celia,’ I said with a sob, and I buried my face in her neck and felt the shudder that ran through her.

‘I am,’ I said, keeping my face down. ‘Celia, I am with child.’

She gasped and froze. I could feel every muscle in her body tense with shock and horror. Then she determinedly turned my face up so she could look into my eyes.

‘Beatrice, are you sure?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ I said, looking as aghast as she. ‘Yes, I am sure. Oh, Celia! Whatever shall I do?’

Her lips trembled, and she put out her hands to cup my face.

‘Whatever happens,’ she said, ‘I shall be your friend.’

Then we were silent while she digested the news.

‘The baby’s father …?’ she said diffidently.

‘I don’t know,’ I said, choosing the safest lie. ‘Do you remember on the day I rode over to you to fit my gown I was taken ill at Havering Hall?’

Celia nodded, her honest eyes on my face.

‘I felt faint on the ride over and had to dismount; I must have swooned and when I awoke, a gentleman was reviving me. My dress was disordered — you may remember a tear on my collar … but I did not know … I could not tell …’ My voice was a strained whisper, almost silenced by tears and shame. ‘He must have dishonoured me while I was unconscious.’

Celia clasped her hands around mine.

‘Did you know him, Beatrice? Would you recognize him again?’

‘No,’ I said, disposing of the happy ending summarily. ‘I had never seen him before. He was in a travelling curricle with luggage strapped on the back. Perhaps he was driving through Acre on his way to London.’

‘Oh, God,’ said Celia, despairingly. ‘My poor darling.’

A sob stopped her from speaking, and we sat with our arms around each other, our wet cheeks touching. I reflected sourly that only a bride bred on tales from the romances and then raped once and left alone would swallow such a faradiddle. But by the time Celia was experienced enough to doubt conception while unconscious, she would be too well encased in my lie to be able to withdraw.

‘What can we do, Beatrice?’ she said, despairingly.

‘I shall think of something,’ I said bravely. ‘Don’t you grieve now, Celia. Go and change for dinner and we will talk more tomorrow when we have had time to think.’

Celia obediently went. But she paused by the door.

‘Will you tell Harry?’ she asked.

I shook my head slowly. ‘He could not bear the thought of me sullied, Celia. You know how he is. He would hunt for that man, that devil, all around England, and not rest until he had killed him. I hope to find some way to keep this great trouble quite secret, between you and me alone. I put my honour in your hands, Celia, dear.’

She would not need telling twice. She came back into the room and kissed me, to assure me of her discretion. Then finally she took herself off, closing the door behind her as softly as if I was an invalid.

I sat up and smiled at my reflection in the glass of the pretty French-style dressing table. I had never looked better. The changes in my body might have made me feel ill, but had done nothing but good for my looks. My breasts were fuller and more voluptuous, and they pressed against my maiden gowns in a way that filled Harry with perpetual desire. My waist was thicker but still trim. My cheeks flushed with a new warmth, and my eyes shone. Now I was back in control of events I felt well. For now I was not a foolish whore encumbered with a bastard, but a proud woman carrying the future Master of Wideacre.

The following day, as we sat and sewed in the sunny parlour of the hotel, Celia wasted no time in returning to our problem. I was fiddling around, supposedly hemming lace that was to be sent home to Mama on the next packet — though I could not help suspecting she would have to wait a long time if she waited for my hemming. Celia was industriously busy: cutting broderie anglaise from a genuine Bordeaux pattern.

‘I have worried all night, but I could think of only one solution,’ Celia said. I glanced at her quickly. There were dark shadows under her eyes. I could believe she had hardly slept at all for worry at my pregnancy. I had hardly slept either, but that was because Harry had woken me at midnight with hard desire, and then again in the early hours of dawn. We could hardly have enough of each other, and I shuddered with perverse pleasure at the thought of Harry’s seed and Harry’s child inside me at once. And I smiled secretly at the thought of how I had gripped Harry’s hips to prevent him plunging too hard inside me, guarding the child who deserved my protection.

And while I was lovemaking with her husband, Celia, dear Celia, was worrying over me.

‘I can think of only one solution,’ Celia said again. ‘Unless you wish to confide in your mama — and I shall understand if you do not, my dear — then you will need to be away from home for the next few months.’ I nodded. Celia’s quick wits were saving me a lot of troublesome persuasion.

‘I thought’, Celia said tentatively, ‘that if you were to say you were ill and needed my company, then we could go to some quiet town, perhaps by the sea, or perhaps one of the spa towns, and we could find some good woman there to care for you during your confinement, and to take the baby when it is born.’

I nodded, but without much enthusiasm.

‘How kind you are, Celia,’ I said gratefully. ‘Would you really help me so?’

‘Oh, yes,’ she said generously. I noted with amusement that six weeks into marriage and she was ready to deceive and lie to her husband without a second’s hesitation.

‘One thing troubles me in that plan,’ I said. ‘That is the fate of the poor little innocent. I have heard that many of these women are not as kindly as they seem. I have heard that they ill-treat or even murder their charges. And although the child was conceived under such circumstances as to make me hate it, it is innocent, Celia. Think of the poor little thing, perhaps a pretty baby girl, a little English girl, growing up far away from any family or friends, quite alone and unprotected.’

Celia laid down her work with tears in her eyes.

‘Oh, poor child! Yes!’ she said. I knew the thought of a lonely childhood would distress her. It struck chords with her own experience.

‘I can hardly bear to think of my child, your niece, Celia, growing up, perhaps among some rough, unkind people, without a friend in the world,’ I said.

Celia’s tears spilled over. ‘Oh, it seems so wrong that she should not be with us!’ she said impulsively. ‘You are right, Beatrice, she should not be far away. She should be near so we can watch over her well-being. If only there was some way we could place her in the village.’

‘Oh!’ I threw up my hands in convincing horror. ‘In that village! One might as well announce it in the newspapers. If we really wish to care for her, to bring her up as a lady, the only place for her would be at Wideacre. If only we could pretend she was an orphan relation of yours, or something.’

‘Yes,’ said Celia. ‘Except that Mama would know that it was not true …’ She fell silent and I gave her a few minutes to think around the idea. Then I planted the seed of my plan in her worrying little mind.

‘If only it were you expecting a child, Celia!’ I said longingly. ‘Everyone would be so pleased with you, especially Harry! Harry would never trouble you with your … wifely duty … and the child could look forward to the best of lives. If only it were your little girl, Celia …’

She gasped, and I sighed silently with a flood of secret relief and joy. I had done it.

‘Beatrice, I have had such an idea!’ she said, half stammering with excitement. ‘Why don’t we say it is me who is expecting a baby, and then say it is my baby? The little dear can live safely with us, and I shall care for her as if she were my own. No one need ever know that she is not. I should be so happy to have a child to care for and you will be saved! What do you think? Could it work?’

I gasped in amazement at her daring. ‘Celia! What an idea!’ I said, stunned. ‘I suppose it could work. We could stay here until the child is born and then bring her home. We could say she was conceived in Paris and born a month early! But would you really want the poor little thing? Perhaps it would be better to let some old woman take her?’

Celia was emphatic. ‘No. I love babies and I should especially love yours, Beatrice. And when I have children of my own she shall be their playmate, my eldest child and as well loved as my own. And she will never, never know she is not my daughter.’ Her voice quavered on a sob, and I knew she was thinking of her own girlhood as the outsider in the Havering nursery.

‘I am sure we can do it,’ she said. ‘I shall take your child and love her and care for her as if she were my own little baby and no one will ever know she is not.’

I smiled as the great weight lifted from me. Now I could see my way clear.

‘Very well then, I accept,’ I said, and we leaned forward and kissed. Celia put her arms around my neck and her soft brown eyes looked trustingly into my opaque green ones. She wore her honesty, her modesty, her virtue, like a gown of purest silk. Infinitely more clever, more powerful, and more cunning, I met her eyes with a smile as sweet as her own.

‘Now,’ she said excitedly, ‘how shall we do it?’

I insisted that we do nothing, lay no more plans for a week. Celia could not understand the delay but accepted it as the whim of an expectant mother and did not press me. I needed nothing more than breathing space and time to consider my plans. I still had a massive hurdle ahead of me and that was to coach Celia into deceiving Harry. I did not immediately want to set her to the task of lying to the man to whom she had promised loyalty and love, because I knew she would lie extremely badly. The more she and Harry were together, the greater the bond between them grew. They were far from being lovers — however could they be with Celia’s terrified frigidity and Harry’s passionate absorption in me? But their friendship grew warmer and closer every day. I could not be sure of Celia’s ability to lock her real self away from Harry, and I was not sure I could teach her to look her husband in the eye and tell him one bare-faced lie after another.

For myself, I had no doubts. When I lay in Harry’s arms I was his, body and soul. But the possession lasted only as long as the pleasure. As soon as I lay beside him, our bodies green-barred by the hotel shutters closed against the afternoon sun, I was again myself. Even when Harry rolled his head on my hardening, swelling breasts, and exclaimed with delight, I felt no need to tell him that this new beauty was because of the forming of his child. He could see I was happy — anyone could see the glint in my eyes betokened deep secret satisfaction — but I felt no need to confide in Harry that every day brought me closer to an unchallenged place at Wideacre. Through Harry, I had assured myself of a place on the land, but to bear the next Master, and to know that all future Squires would be the blood of my blood and the bone of my bone, was a hard, secret delight.

When I sat at the hotel window in the morning and looked out along the wide, lovely avenue of slant-branched poplars, I daydreamed of other trees, of our lovely beeches. Then I smiled to think of myself an old lady, forever at the head of the Wideacre table: the Squire’s autocratic aunt with more power than any other member of the family — ruling the Squire, his wife and his children with all the strength of blood and wit.

I sat so, dreaming, one morning, when I saw the cockade of the postman’s hat coming down the street. A knock on the parlour door made me turn and smile to see some letters from home. There was one from Mama for me — I recognized the writing — and one for me in a strange, neat hand. I broke the seal and glanced first at the head of the letter, which started formally, ‘Dear Miss Lacey’, and then at the foot, where it was signed, ‘John MacAndrew’. I believe I smiled. I believe I blushed. So Dr MacAndrew was entering into a clandestine correspondence, was he? Well, well, well. I smoothed the silk of my gown in an unconscious gesture of vanity, and turned again to the start of the letter. I could have saved my blushes. He was very businesslike.

Dear Miss Lacey,

I apologize for addressing you without your mother’s permission, but I write to you concerning her health. She is not well, and I believe the responsibility for running the estate is causing her some worry.

She is in no danger; but I would advise you not to extend your trip beyond the promised limits.

I have attended her in a recent slight illness and my diagnosis is that she has a weak heart which should cause no major impairment of her health, provided that she can avoid anxiety.

I trust that you, Lady Lacey and Sir Harry are in good health and enjoying your trip.

Your obedient servant,

John MacAndrew.

My first instinct was one of intense irritation that John MacAndrew should be meddling in my affairs. Just when I needed to prolong my stay in France he was ordering me home like a child from school. I would not go, of course. But to escape this responsibility might cost me some trouble.

My second reaction was better. This problem with Mama’s health could be the very thing to solve the pressing problem of keeping myself and Celia in France while Harry sped home. He could hold Mama’s hand during her palpitations, or whatever ailment she was affecting to get her darling boy home. I put this suggestion — suitably embroidered — to Celia, and she fell on the idea.

‘Oh, yes!’ she said. We were in her room as she dressed to go out for our drive, and her eyes met mine in her long mirror. ‘But you will be so anxious about your mama, Beatrice.’

‘Yes,’ I said sorrowfully. ‘But until we have a solution, Celia, I could not go home. And at least I will have the comfort of knowing that Harry is at hand to care for her. Harry will be able to take the anxiety of running Wideacre off her shoulders.’

‘Let us tell him at once,’ said Celia decisively. So we tied our bonnets and adjusted our parasols and drove out to find him.

Harry was visiting a farm where they used seaweed for manure, as we planned to do at Wideacre. I believed that on chalk soil like our upland pastures you should use animal manure, and the seaweed is of use only in the sand and clay of the valley bottoms. But Harry believed it could be used on the slopes of chalk if it was properly rotted. He was visiting a farm where they dried and turned the seaweed in the sun and rain before ploughing it in, and we drove towards the farm expecting to see him riding home.

Celia’s face lit up as we saw a horseman coming towards us. Under the influence of the French fashions in this little provincial town, Harry had taken to leaving off his wig and growing his hair. Under the tricorn, his golden curls glinted in the sunlight, and he rode his livery nag as if it were an Arab racer.

‘Hallo!’ he said, reining in alongside the carriage. ‘This is a pleasant surprise.’ His smile was impartially for both of us, but his eyes rested on me.

‘We brought a picnic out for lunch,’ said Celia. ‘Have you seen a nice place?’

‘Why, let us go back to the farm. They have a splendid river there. If only I had brought my rods with me, I could have tried for one of their trout.’

‘I brought them!’ said Celia triumphantly. ‘I simply knew that if I brought a picnic you would have a trout stream at hand, and the first thing you would want would be your rods.’

Harry bent over her hand resting on the side of the carriage and kissed it.

‘You are the best wife in all the world,’ he told her lovingly. ‘Excellent!’

He wheeled and called, ‘Follow me!’ to the driver and led us to the riverbank.

I did not mention Dr MacAndrew’s letter until we had eaten and Harry had been sitting with his expensive rods and empty nets for a good half an hour. I showed him the letter and then Mama’s lengthier, twice-crossed paper, which was full of anxieties about the winter sowing and confusion about which fields were to be sowed and which rested.

‘We should return at once, I think,’ said Harry when he had read Dr MacAndrew’s brief note, and spent rather longer puzzling out Mama’s spidery scrawl. ‘Mama has always been susceptible to these attacks, I know, and I should hate her to be worried into illness.’

‘I agree. We should get home as quickly as we can,’ I said. ‘Dr MacAndrew writes calmly so as not to alarm us, but he would not write at all if the situation were not serious. Which is the quickest way home?’

‘We are lucky being in Bordeaux,’ said Harry, thoughtfully. ‘If this letter had caught us in Italy, or the middle of France, we would have taken weeks. As it is, we can get a packet ship home to Bristol and post-chaise from there.’

I smiled. Everything was well for me and I left the plan at that. When Celia glanced in surprise at me, I frowned at her, and she obediently said nothing.

Indeed, it was not until several hours later that I raised the problem of my seasickness and told Harry I feared I could not face a long sea trip.

‘You will think me a very unloving daughter, I am sure,’ I said smiling bravely. ‘But, Harry, I dare not set foot on board for a long voyage, especially in November. I can barely face crossing the Channel again.’

We were in our private drawing room after dinner and Harry paused in his letter-writing, with the sailing times before him.

‘Well, what is to be done, Beatrice?’ he asked. He turned to me for a solution to problems just as he turned to Celia for little treats and comforts.

‘Mama needs you,’ I said bravely. ‘So I think you should go. Celia and I can stay here until we hear how things are at home. If Mama is still ill once you have freed her from the cares of Wideacre, then I shall simply have to find the courage to sail home. But if you are happy about her condition, and confident there is no danger, then we can travel post to the Channel and sail to Portsmouth.’

‘Yes, or I could come and fetch you,’ said Harry comfortingly. ‘Or we could arrange for a courier to escort you. Of course you cannot travel alone. Does it seem the best plan to you, Beatrice?’

I smiled and nodded, trying to keep the satisfaction out of my face. Not only had Harry fallen in with my ideas to the letter, but noticeably he had not even glanced in Celia’s direction for her opinion. She was to go home or stay in France as I pleased.

‘What about the servants?’ said Harry. ‘I shall take my valet home, of course, but that leaves you with the maids and the two travelling coaches.’

‘Oh, spare me!’ I said in laughing consternation. ‘We shall be following you in a few days! Celia and I are not so nice that we cannot manage with a French maid for a few days. Harry, pray do not leave me with a couple of servants and two carriages to transport home!’

Harry grinned. ‘No, of course not,’ he said. ‘I can arrange for the carriages and all the heavy trunks to come with me, and if you wish it your maids can come with me too.’

‘Yes please,’ I said and turned to Celia. ‘You do not mind being without a maid for that little while, do you, Celia?’

She kept her head down to her work, a poor liar and she knew it.

‘Of course not,’ she said, her voice steady.

‘Very well then,’ said Harry. ‘It is decided. I shall see the landlord.’ He paused at the door. ‘I hope this is agreeable to you, Celia?’ he asked politely.

‘Of course,’ she said generously. ‘Whatever you and Beatrice wish.’

Harry went out and Celia held her tongue until the door had firmly shut behind him. Then she regarded me with awe.

‘Beatrice, you did almost nothing, and yet everything came out as you wanted it,’ she said.

I smiled and tried to keep the smugness from my voice.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It always does.’

Harry sailed, but our last night together was one of lingering sweetness. He was ready to be sentimental at our parting. We had not spent one night apart since we landed in France, and we had slept every night under the same roof since we had become lovers. Now he was off to take responsibility for the running of a great estate, a full-grown man and a husband. I felt a glow of pride in him as I lay beside him, and smiled on him.

‘My God, Beatrice. You grow lovelier every day,’ he said, with pride of ownership in his voice. He leaned over me and buried his face in the warm valley between my newly plump breasts. ‘I adore you, this bit fatter,’ he said, his voice muffled as he kissed up one smooth slope and took a nipple in his mouth. I rumpled his hair and pushed his head down. Further down over the rounding curve of my newly hard belly so his tongue could trail a hot wet path lower, and lower and lower.

This was just playing at love — teasing each other’s satisfied bodies after a long night of lovemaking. I sighed with pleasure, not only at the delightful little darts of sensation trailing hotly under my skin, but also at the knowledge that we had all this early morning alone, secure from interruption.

‘When I come home,’ I said idly, ‘let’s make sure that we spend afternoons and nights together like this. I shan’t want to hide out on the downs or creep round the house like we did before.’

‘No,’ said Harry absently, rearing up to lay his head beside me on the pillow again. ‘I have ordered them to open up the adjoining door from my dressing room into the west wing so I can be in your side of the house without anyone knowing it — and without having to cross the hall. I will be able to come while the others are asleep.’

‘And at tea time,’ I said smiling.

‘And’ breakfast,’ he said.

He rolled over and checked his watch lying on the bedside table.

‘I must get dressed,’ he said. ‘Celia will soon be back from buying provisions for the voyage and I have to make sure she packs all my papers.’

I nodded but did not move.

‘Write to me as soon as you get home,’ I said. ‘I shall want to hear about Wideacre. Remember to tell me which cows are in calf and how the winter wheat is looking, and if the hay will last.’

‘And about Mama,’ said Harry.

‘Oh, yes, and about Mama,’ I concurred.

‘And you take care of yourself,’ said Harry tenderly, reaching for a clean shirt. ‘I wish you would come home with me now, Beatrice. I do hate the thought of leaving you all alone here.’

‘Nonsense,’ I said gently, and slid out of bed. ‘Celia and I will be perfectly all right. We will enjoy a leisurely journey home and we can travel with Lady Davey and her daughters as soon as they arrive in town. Then you can come and meet us at Portsmouth, or even if you wish come over to France.’

‘I may well do so,’ said Harry, brightening. ‘But only if I get my sea legs this time. I do dread the voyage, I must admit. You are well out of it, you little coward.’

‘Chicken-hearted,’ I agreed, smiling. I turned my back to him and swept up my long hair so he could fasten the little buttons I could not manage at the nape of my neck. His fingers fiddled with the little fastenings, and when he had done he bent his head to kiss me on the hairline, and tenderly grazed the strong muscles of my neck with his teeth. I leaned against him, enjoying the shivers that ran down my spine at the touch of his mouth. On the tip of my tongue was the confession that we were expecting a child. I thought for a moment that if only we were as we seemed to be — a mutually adoring married couple — how blissfully happy Harry would be at the news.

But my caution and my keen cool brain held me back from a confession grown out of the sweetness of love in the early morning. Harry’s loyalties were already divided. I could not risk him protecting Celia from the injury that was coming to her. She might be too naive and silly to realize that in accepting my son as her own she would displace her own children for ever — but Harry was not. He would never consent to have my bastard son (even though fathered by himself) as his heir, when his wife could have other legitimate boys of her own.

My mood of relaxed love and trusting confidence passed. I would never trust anyone with all my secrets, not even my darling Harry. We had grown close and relaxed on this long easy journey, but there was a cutting edge in me, a sharpness of wit that Harry lacked. Harry was my lover, my desire, but he did not make me shudder as Ralph could, with one sideways glance. And I could not imagine Harry wading through sin and crime to come with bloody hands to me. With Harry I was the master; with Ralph we were sensual, passionate equals; equally sharp, equally wise. Good hard lust I had for Ralph; Harry gave me worship and kisses and cuddles like some lovesick youth.

I had two hanging crimes locked in my heart, and passing off a bastard was no light offence either. No one would ever again see fully into my heart as Ralph had done in the early days. No one ever again would hear a straight answer from me. Ralph was not the only one crippled in that dreadful trap — my honour, my honesty, was broken there, too. And I was right to be cautious with Harry. His next words proved it.

‘Take care of Celia, Beatrice,’ he said, tying a fresh cravat and eyeing it critically in the mirror. ‘She has been such a little darling on this trip. I would not want her to miss me too much. Look after her and remind me to give you some spending money before I go, to buy whatever little things she wants.’

I nodded, and said not a word as he frittered away money from Wideacre, needed at Wideacre, on French trifles for a woman who already had enough.

‘I shall miss you,’ he said, turning from the mirror to hold me again. I slid into his arms and pressed my face against his clean starched shirt, sniffling with pleasure the clean smell of the linen and the warm smell of Harry underneath.

‘Do you know,’ he said in sudden surprise, ‘I shall miss you both! Come home as quickly as you can, won’t you, Beatrice?’

‘Of course,’ I said.