Wideacre

10

I started with my own quarters. The builders had finished in the west wing and it was ready for me. The lovely heavy old furniture, which had been exiled from Harry’s bedroom on his return from school to his mock-pagoda, had been bundled into a lumber room at the top of the house, and I had it taken out and polished until it gleamed with the deep shine of Jacobean walnut. Knobby with carving, so heavy it took six sweating men to carry it. ‘So ugly!’ said Celia in gentle wonderment. It was the furniture of my childhood and I felt a room was insubstantial without it. The great carved bed with the four posts, as thick as poplar trunks, with the carved roof above, I moved to my bedroom in the west wing.

Now I had a room that looked out on the front not the side of the house and I could see from my window the rose garden, the paddock, our wood and the lovely crescent of the downs rising behind it all. The carved chest stood beside it, and a great heavy press for my dresses loomed in the adjoining dressing room.

Once the lumber room upstairs was cleared of the heavy old furniture, I found much there that had belonged to my papa. Servant-like, the maids had bundled away his things into a mess of saddles, riding crops, hacking jackets and thongs of whips. My papa had fancied himself as an amateur saddler and his saddle rack and a wooden horse had also been thrown in the room. Once the furniture was set in the room below, the horse stood, forlorn, in the little room at the top of the stairs. Some whimsicality, some respect for my papa, stopped me throwing it out with the odd saddles and the whip he had been mending. Instead I put them all in the centre of the room and set myself to learning the skills that had come so easily to him. Long afternoons I spent there, my fingers busy with pulling threads through leather, my palms rosy with the sting of the saddler’s needle, oddly at peace.

Downstairs I had collected Papa’s old rent table: a great round table that looked as old as Arthur’s and could be spun so each labelled drawer faced the Squire in the great carver chair. Each drawer bore a letter of the alphabet and all the papers relating to each tenant were kept under the letter of his name. Beside it I placed the great money chest and here, monthly or quarterly, I collected the rents and, weekly or daily, paid out the wages. This was the office, the centre of the great money-spinning business of Wideacre, and I held the keys. I had ordered from Chichester an artist’s easel and commissioned a detailed scale map of the estate, so boundaries could at last be precisely recorded instead of being argued out on the spot in the old way. I had also purloined my papa’s old desk from the library — one with pigeonholes and two secret hiding places — to stand beside the window, so I could look up from the accounts to gaze across the roses to the paddock and the green woods and see the sun roll across the top of the downs, smiling on Wideacre crops and Wideacre profits.

The smaller downstairs room I had been unable to save from Mama’s mania for pastel and gold and it was a conventional lady’s parlour. She had furnished it for me with a pale carpet, spindly furniture and pretty brocaded curtains. I made sure I had a sweet smile of thanks, and concealed my grimace of distaste at the vapid prettiness. The most important thing about the room, as about the whole wing, was that it was accepted by everyone that I might sit here in the evenings alone, and that I might spend my mornings, or even all day, in the office.

The infant angel contributed to my peace in this. Even Mama agreed I could not possibly work, add up accounts, or write letters of business, with a small baby gurgling or crying in the same room. Since Harry or Celia had her brought into the parlour every afternoon and evening, it was easy for me to be excused attendance on the little treasure for at least a part of that time.

What I could not escape was my own response to the baby. She really was enchanting. She had kept the deep blue eyes she was born with and had soft brown hair, soft as silk to the touch, soft as puppies’ coats. In the sunshine one could clearly see the touch of my own rich copper, and when she grew strong enough to rear up in her cradle, I could see the gleam of my own curls on the warm little head.

Celia put her out to sit in the sunshine of the terrace every afternoon in fine weather and on warm days. When I had my office window open I could hear the sound of her coos and gurgles mingling with the buzz of bumblebees and the deeper coos of the wood pigeons from the woods. When I was stuck for a phrase in a business letter, or could not make a column of figures say the same thing more than once, I would look out of the window and see her little legs kicking in the air, or her fists waving as she tried to catch at the sun or the lacy edge of her sunshade.

One day her coos were so resonant and contented I nearly laughed aloud at the noise. She sounded so like me, with my passion for sunshine and warm breezes on my skin. In all this house of people who trod the land as if it were floorboards, it seemed only I and my daughter, Celia’s daughter, were the ones who knew where we were. I, and a baby too small to speak, too young to understand. As I watched and listened I saw one of her toys, a well-sucked toy rabbit made of lamb’s wool, fly out of the cradle. The contented gurgle was silenced in the sudden disappointment and a note of complaint took its place. Without thinking twice, I opened the tall window of my office and stepped over the window sill on to the terrace.

I picked up the toy and tucked it back in the crib beside her. Ignoring it altogether she beamed up at my face and her legs and arms went into a little frenzy of kicks to welcome me. She gurgled loudly; she reached for me. I chuckled; she was irresistible. No wonder the entire household was demented over her smiles. She was as much of a domestic tyrant as I could ever be. We were much alike, this little baby and I.

I bent to smile at her, before I left her and went back to my study, and flicked her cheek with one careless finger. She caught it with a surprisingly strong grasp and guided it unerringly towards her smiling, toothless mouth. The little gums closed on it and the cheeks hollowed as she sucked vigorously, her eyes hazy blue with delight. I chuckled; the child was an utter sensualist, like myself. And she grabbed her pleasures, like I do, with a firm grip. When I tried to pull away she hung on and was half lifted from the cradle before I relented and scooped her up and placed her against my neck.

She smelled so sweet. That delicious baby smell of warm clean skin and soap. That sweet smell lingering around their mouths from drinking only warm milk. That lovely clean smell of newly laundered cotton and newly washed best wool. I tucked her little head securely into my shoulder and swayed a little. Her coos of pleasure started again, resonant by my ear, and when I turned my face to sniff the warm little crease of her plump neck she made me laugh aloud by suddenly fixing her mouth on to my jaw line, like a little vampire, and sucking noisily and with evident satisfaction.

The smile still on my face, my feet still dancing to jiggle her, I turned towards the house. Someone was in the parlour window watching me. It was Celia. She stood utterly still, her face like white marble.

My face was still warm with laughter and affection for the little baby, but as I met her eyes the smile died from me and I felt uneasy and guilty — as guilty as if she had caught me with my hands in her lace drawer, or if she had found me reading her letters. She disappeared and a few seconds later the front door opened and she came out on to the terrace.

Her hands were trembling but her face was set and her walk was swift and direct. She came to me without a word, and lifted the baby from the warmth of my neck with as much emotion as if she were taking a scarf off me.

‘I put Julia out for her sleep,’ she said unemotionally. She turned her back to me and placed Julia in the cradle. Disappointed, the child started a wail of protest, but Celia tucked her in as firmly as any strict nurse.

‘I would rather she were not disturbed when she should be having her rest,’ said Celia.

I felt as awkward as a boy in an apple orchard.

‘Of course, Celia,’ I said deferentially. ‘She dropped her toy and I merely came out to give it back to her.’

Celia straightened up and turned to me. ‘She would be happy to play that game all afternoon,’ she said. ‘But you, I am sure, have work to do.’

I was dismissed. Little insignificant Celia, standing tall with the power of her motherhood over the child, had dismissed me like an unreliable maid.

‘Of course,’ I said, and I smiled like an idiot. ‘Of course.’ And I turned on my heel and went back down the terrace to where my office window stood open and my desk waited, piled with papers. In the length of that short, awkward walk, I could feel Celia’s eyes on my back, Celia watching me with no affection in her gaze.

I should have learned from that, I suppose. But Julia drew me. A little, only a little. I had no great longing for her. When I occasionally heard her cry out in the night I slept better for my deep contentment that it was not me who had to get up to see to her. When she was fretting during the day, or when Celia missed supper and the tea tray because she was up in the nursery, I felt no instinct then to be with the baby. But sometimes — when the weather was hot and I could see her little legs kicking and hear her cooing — I would slink out to the terrace like a clandestine lover and smile at her, and tickle her plump little palms and feet.

I learned discretion. Celia never again caught me hanging over the cradle. But when she went to Chichester with Harry to choose some new hangings for the nursery, and Mama lay down feeling unwell because of the heat, I spent an easy, laughter-filled half-hour playing peep-bo with the baby, dodging round her sunshade and appearing as if by magic on one side of the cradle and then the other, which made her gurgle with laughter so much she nearly choked herself.

Predictably, I tired of the game long before she did. Besides I had to drive down to the village to see the smith. She gripped my face when I kissed her goodbye, but when I actually disappeared she set up such a howl of protest that her nurse came bustling out of the house to see what was wrong.

‘She won’t settle now,’ she said, eyeing me with disfavour. ‘She’s all awake and playful now.’

‘It’s my fault,’ I confessed. ‘What would settle her down?’

‘I shall have to rock her,’ said the nurse, grudgingly. ‘The movement of the cradle might do it.’

‘I have to drive to the village,’ I offered. ‘Would she fall asleep in the carriage?’

The nurse’s face brightened at once at the prospect of an airing in my smart curricle and she bustled off to get her bonnet and an extra shawl for Julia.

I had been right. As soon as she was lifted from the cradle, Julia beamed her approval and started her delightful coos of pleasure. And when we trotted down the drive with the bars of sunlight and shade from the roof of trees flickering in her eyes she waved her little hands to greet the wind and the sound of trotting hoofs and the brightness and rush and beauty of it all.

I slowed down on the bridge over the Fenny.

‘This is the Fenny,’ I told her solemnly. ‘When you are a big girl I shall teach you how to tickle for trout here. Your papa can teach you how to use a rod and line like a lady, but I shall teach you how to tickle them and flick them out on the bank like a proper country child.’

She beamed at me as if she understood every word, and I beamed back in mutual approval. Then I clicked to Sorrel and we trotted past the lodge gates where Sarah waved to us and out down the sunny lane to Acre.

‘These are the meadowlands, resting this year,’ I told Julia, gesturing with my whip. ‘I think good fields should be rested every three years and grow just grass. Your papa thinks they should be rested every five. You can be the judge of that for we have rested some for three years and some for five, and when you are a lady, farming the land like me, you can be the judge of which system kept the land in the greatest heart.’

Julia’s little sun bonnet nodded gravely as if she could understand every word. But I think she may have caught the inflexion of my voice and heard my tones of love for the land, and of a growing tenderness for her.

Half-a-dozen people were outside the smithy when I drew up, villagers and one fanner tenant waiting for his work-horse to be shod. The women were around the curricle in a second, admiring the pretty baby and the exquisite lace dress. I tossed the reins to the smith, who came out, wiping grimy hands on his leather apron, and passed the baby carefully down to the village women.

They cooed over her, as maternal as broody hens; they touched her lace petticoats and her fleecy shawl and they stood in line so that each might hold her and admire the smoothness of her skin, the blueness of her eyes and the utter whiteness of her clothes.

By the time I had finished with the smith, she had reached the end of the line, a little dishevelled but none the worse for being handed round like some sacred relic.

‘Better change her before her mama gets back,’ I said ruefully to her nurse, noting the lace trimming on her little gown was grey where it had been fingered by hands ingrained with years of dirt.

‘Indeed, yes,’ said Nurse stiffly. ‘Lady Lacey has never taken her to the village and would never have let those people touch her.’

I glanced sharply at her, but I said nothing for a moment.

‘She’s taken no harm,’ I said eventually. ‘Have you, little girl? And these people will be your people, as they are mine. These are the people who make the money that keeps Wideacre prosperous and beautiful. They are dirty so that we can have daily baths and fine clean clothes. You must always be ready with a smile for them, little one. You belong to each other.’

I drove in silence then, enjoying the wind in my face and keeping a careful eye on the road ahead to make sure we struck no stones which might jog her. I was driving so carefully I hardly heard the noise of a carriage and pair and I jumped like a criminal when I suddenly saw, in the road ahead of us, the family chaise. They were just ready to turn into the lodge gate; another second earlier and I might have been home before them. As it was, Celia, gazing out of the offside window, had a perfect view of my curricle trotting briskly down the lane from Acre, with her nurse and her child sitting up bold as brass in the passenger seat.

Her eyes met mine and her face was blank. I knew she was angry and I felt no surprise. I had a sinking feeling in my gut, the like of which I had not felt since I was a child in disgrace with my papa. I had never thought Celia capable of rages. But to take her child out for a drive without permission was, I knew, something she would regard as wrong. And faced with that icy stare I felt extremely guilty.

I did not hurry to follow them up the drive, but there was no enraged mother waiting for me in the stable yard. Nurse and Julia dismounted and went into the house by the west-wing door, to slink up to the nursery for a total change of clothes, I guessed. I handed Sorrel over to the groom and went round to the front door. Celia was waiting for me in the hall and she drew me into the parlour. Harry, discreetly, perhaps obediently, was nowhere to be seen.

I turned to the mirror above the fireplace and took off my hat.

‘What a wonderful day,’ I said lightly. ‘Did you find the things you need in Chichester? Or will you have to send to London?’

Celia said nothing. I had to turn from the mirror to face her. She was standing still in the middle of the room, dominating it with her slight presence and the force of her anger.

‘I must ask you never to take Julia out without my express personal permission,’ she said evenly, totally ignoring my questions.

I met her eyes but said nothing.

‘I must also remind you that Harry and I decided that Julia should not be taken out in a curricle, or any open-topped carriage,’ said Celia. ‘We, her parents, decided we did not think it safe for her so to travel.’

‘Oh, come now, Celia,’ I said airily. ‘She took no harm. I had the safest horse in the stable between the shafts. I trained Sorrel myself. I just took her down the lane to Acre because she would not settle on the terrace.’

Celia looked at me. She looked at me as if I were an obstacle on her road that somehow had to be crossed over or gone around.

‘Her father and I decided we do not wish her to travel in an open carriage and that includes your curricle, whatever horse you are driving,’ she said slowly, as if explaining something to a stupid child.

‘Further, I do not wish her to be taken out of her cradle, or out of the house, or out of the estate, without my express and personal permission.’

I shrugged. ‘Oh, Celia, let’s not pull caps over this,’ I said easily. ‘I am sorry. I should not have done such a thing without first confirming you had no objection. I merely had to drive to Acre and it amused me to take Julia and show her the land, her home, like my papa used to do with me and with Harry.’

Celia’s gaze never wavered and her expression did not warm to the casual tone of my apology. ‘Her situation is very different from either yours or Harry’s,’ she said steadily. ‘There is no reason why she should have a similar upbringing.’

‘She’s a Wideacre baby!’ I said in surprise. ‘Of course she must learn about the land and go out on the land. This is her home, just as it is mine. She belongs here, even as I do.’

Celia’s head jerked and her cheeks suddenly flushed scarlet.

‘No,’ she said. ‘She does not belong here as you do. What your plans are, Beatrice, I do not know. I came into this house to live with my husband and with your mama and with you. But my Julia will not live here all her life. She will marry and leave. She will spend her girlhood here, but I dare say she will be away at school for much of the time. Then she will make visits to friends. Wideacre will not be the only house in the world for her. There will be very much more in her life than the land and the house. She will not have a childhood like yours, nor interests like yours, nor a life like yours.’

I gaped at Celia, but there was nothing I could say.

‘As you wish,’ I said in a tone as cold as hers. ‘You are her mother, Celia.’

And then I turned on my heel and left her, standing alone in the middle of the parlour. And I went to my office and shut the door and leaned back against the panels. And I stood still in the quiet of my office with my papers around me, for a long time.

Julia was utterly Celia’s child. It was all done as Celia wished. Mama would have had the baby’s diet supplemented with a spoonful of molasses, or at least honey, at every mealtime. Celia refused and the baby drank only pure breast milk. Harry wanted to give her little sips from his glass of port when she sat on his knee after dinner. But Celia did not allow it. Mama wanted her swaddled, and Celia stood up to her with as much polite certainty as she had ever shown against a wish of my mama’s — and she carried the day.

Mama had threatened that Julia’s limbs would grow crooked if she were not strapped tightly to boards, but Celia stood against her and even called in Dr MacAndrew for support. He was full of praise for the decision and promised she would be stronger and healthier for her freedom.

Dr MacAndrew’s voice in our household carried a great deal of weight. In our absence he had become a friend and confidant to Mama, who told him, I suspected, much about herself and her married life and her ill health. She told him also, I imagined, something about the problems she had encountered in rearing me, for I did not like the gleam I sometimes saw in the doctor’s eyes when we met. He looked always as if he liked what he saw, but he looked always as if I might somehow amuse him, in some way I could not fathom. And Mama watched us closely.

The first time we met after our return from France was awkward. I was pouring tea for Mama in the parlour when he came in for a routine call on Julia and made social conversation to me with the skill of à well-mannered man, which ignored my quick flush, that had risen when he first came into the room.

‘You look as if France agreed with you, Miss Lacey,’ he said. Mama’s eyes were sharply upon us and I withdrew my hand from his clasp and sat down again behind the urn.

‘Indeed it did,’ I said equably. ‘But I am glad to be home.’

I poured him tea and handed him the cup and saucer with a hand that was rock-steady. It would take more than a gentle smile from Dr MacAndrew to make me tremble.

‘I have made a new acquisition while you were away,’ he said, conversationally. ‘I have bought a new horse from abroad, a full-bred Arab, as a saddle-horse. I shall be interested to know what you think of him.’

‘An Arab!’ I said. ‘I think we shall not agree on that. I still prefer the English breeds for our climate and our terrain. I have yet to see a pure-bred Arab with the staying power necessary for a long day’s hunting.’

He laughed. ‘Well, I shall take a wager with you on that,’ he said. ‘I would back Sea Fern against any hunter in your stables, on the flat or over hurdles.’

‘Oh, racing,’ I said dismissively. ‘I would not argue with you there. I see how well they do in short races, but it is stamina they lack.’

‘I have ridden Sea Fern all day on calls and he has been ready for a gallop over the downs in the evening,’ Dr MacAndrew said. ‘Miss Lacey, you will not fault him.’

I laughed. ‘My papa always used to say it was a waste of time to talk sense to a man who was selling land or who had bought a horse. I shall not try to persuade you. Let me see him after one winter and perhaps we will agree then. After you have paid your corn merchant for an animal too high-bred to stomach anything but oats all the year round, you may come to agree with me.’

The young doctor smiled, his blue gaze easy and direct.

‘Of course I shall spend a fortune on him,’ he said easily. ‘One should be proud to be ruined feeding a fine animal. I would rather spend money on oats than in my kitchen or on my cellar.’

‘Well, there we do agree,’ I smiled. ‘Horses are quite the most important thing in a household.’ I went on to tell him of the horses I had seen in France — such poor things on the streets and such fine animals in the noblemen’s stables. And he told me more about his precious Sea Fern. Then we talked of form and breeding until Harry and Celia came in with Nurse carrying the baby, and all rational conversation was ended for that day, for the baby had learned to hold her toes.

But at parting he took the tips of my fingers in his assured clasp and said, ‘So when will you ride your challenge, Miss Lacey? Sea Fern and I are ready. Shall we ride a race? Ground and distance of your choosing.’

‘A challenge?’ I asked and laughed. Harry heard our voices and looked up from the cradle where he was dangling his watch.

‘I think you may lose, Beatrice,’ he warned me. ‘I have seen Dr MacAndrew’s horse and he is not one of the dainty Arabs that you know but something more impressive.’

‘I shall take my chance against any Arab in the land on Tobermory,’ I said, naming the best hunter in the stables.

‘Well, I’ll back you,’ said Harry with enthusiasm. ‘Fifty crowns, sir?’

‘Oh-ho! A hundred!’ said Dr MacAndrew and then we were all betting. Celia waged her pearl necklace against my pearl earrings; Mama bet me a new bookcase for the office. Harry promised me a new riding habit if I defended the honour of the Wideacre stables and I bet him a new silver-handled hunting whip that I would do so! Then John MacAndrew looked at me and I met the challenge of his sandy-lashed gaze.

‘And what shall be our wager?’ I asked.

The room went silent; Mama watched us curiously, a half-smile on her face.

‘Winner names the forfeit,’ he said promptly, as if he had planned this. ‘If I win I shall claim a prize from you, Miss Lacey. And you may claim one from me.’

‘An open wager is a dangerous game for the loser,’ I said with a gurgle of laughter at the back of my voice.

‘Better win then,’ he said and left.

The forthcoming race did two things to Harry. It concentrated his attention on me again and he and I spent a happy morning in the office with the new-drawn map of Wideacre before us, planning the course. Then, and this was even better, it inspired him to leave the baby and Celia and ride out with me to check the route where we could see the condition of the ground. It was the first ride we had taken together since my return and I deliberately suggested the bridle-way along the downs that passed the hollow where we had first made love.

It was a sweet day, hot and promising to be hotter, with the smell of new-mown hay blowing off the meadows. On the upper slopes leading to the downs they were harvesting and the heady smell of the crops, herbs and the long-stemmed flowers breathed over us. Every heap of straw gleamed with red poppies, blue larkspur and the white and gold of moon daisies. I hooked up a swatch of a heap with the handle of my crop and sniffed at it with passionate delight. I should so adore to be a horse and eat the stuff. The smell of it is so appetizing, like the very best tea or good quality tobacco. I tucked the poppies under the band of my hat, although I knew they would be faded by the end of the morning. Poppies, like pleasure, do not last. But one should have them, anyway. My riding habit this year was a deep crimson and the scarlet of the flowers, bright as a blacksmith’s furnace, clashed wonderfully against the deep darkness of it. If Mama had seen the two reds shrieking at each other she would have smiled and said, ‘Beatrice has no eye for colour.’ But she would have been wrong. I had such an eye for colour, especially the colour of Wideacre flowers, that no colour can seem wrong to me. Harry smiled at me.

‘I can see you are happy to be home, Beatrice,’ he said lovingly.

‘It is heaven,’ I said, and I told no lie.

He nodded and smiled. We rode on upwards, our horses pushing breast-high through the bracken, while flies buzzed around their heads and kept their ears twitching in irritation. Then we broke from the ferns as from a green sea, and scrambled up the crest of the downs like landfall.

The horses lengthened their stride and snorted in anticipation. Harry was riding Saladin, a fresh young hunter, but my horse, Tobermory, was rested and eager and took the lead when I released the tension on the reins. We cantered easily along the track that winds along the crest of the downs and I looked down, as I always look down, to see a miniature Wideacre, like a perfect toy, nestling in the patchwork fields and woods below.

The track wound its way between trees and I lost sight of my home, the home I carried always in my mind. We were in a secluded enough spot. Some earth movement had thrown up a trench on the smooth crest of the downs and hundreds and hundreds of years ago this little wood had taken root and was now grown to tower above us. Sweet green beeches and small oaks made a tiny shelter for us and around their roots pale woodland flowers were like stars in the darkness of the forest floor. It extended for no more than a couple of hundred yards but in that space there were little leafy hollows and the undergrowth was thick. I stole a sidelong glance at Harry and noted with anxiety the firmness of his mouth. He was looking straight forward, unseeing, past his horse’s ears. Saladin, on a short rein, shook his head in protest, but Harry’s grip only tightened.

‘Stop the horses, Harry,’ I said in a gentle voice. He reined in but there was no gladness in his face. He was holding Saladin too tightly and the horse pulled back at the bit. Harry’s face was grim and there was a hint of desperation in his eyes. I read him like a book. I had known him inside out when I seduced him, and I had known the chance I had taken when I sent him home to England alone. Now I realized coldly that Harry was seeking to make an end with me in order to be clean and guiltless and free to love — not Celia — but the adored baby.

I sat in the saddle, as lovely as ever, as desirable as ever, and I knew with certainty that while I lived in the house that should be mine but that he called his, and rode on the land that should be mine but that he claimed, I had to have Harry. I knew also that I would hate and resent him every day and night for the rest of my life. My passion for him had gone. Why, I do not know. It had faded like a new-picked poppy the second I had his heart to wear in my hatband. Harry was so lightly won, so easily kept. In France, away from the land he owned, but which I needed so badly, he seemed such a very ordinary youth. Good-looking indeed, charming, amusing, not very bright; you could have half-a-dozen Harrys at any English-dominated hotel in any French town. Away from the land and empty of the magic of the harvest, Harry was not special.

But even if my passion had turned to disgust I would still have sought him out. My heart-throbbing, trembling desire for him might have been worn out by the easy conquest and use of his body. But I still needed the Squire. Harry and I had to be lovers to keep me safe on the land.

‘Harry,’ I said, and I let my voice linger on his name.

‘It is over, Beatrice,’ he said jerkily. ‘I have sinned, God knows, with you and led you into sin. But it is over now and we will never be together in that way again. In time, I know, you will come to love elsewhere.’

A silence fell. My brain was racing like a ferret in a cage to find the spring on the trap of Harry’s desire, but there was none at hand. I let the silence ride and watched him. He lifted his head. His face was set and determined. I could see he had set his heart on becoming the loving father, the good husband, the powerful Squire of some maudlin fantasy, and the sly, secret pleasures of our love were not part of this daydream of a virtuous new life.

My eyes on his face were as inscrutable as an emerald snake’s, while my mind turned over the problem of this new, moralistic Harry. This time and this place were not the way to come at Harry. He had prepared for an offer of love on this ride; he had armed himself against me. He had his lust on as tight a rein as his horse, which sidled and backed against the merciless bit. The way to Harry was not to let him prepare and consider and reject me in advance. The way to capture Harry was to surprise his lust before his conscience was awake. This little wood, this warm secluded morning would all have to go to waste. Harry would not be taken here.

I smiled with a sweet and open smile, and saw the answering beam of relief on Harry’s face.

‘Oh, Harry, I am so glad,’ I said. ‘You know it was never my wish, it was something that happened against my will, against both of our wills, and it always troubled me so. Thank God we think alike on this. I have been in agonies over how I could tell you of my resolve that we should end.’

The godly fool’s face lit up. ‘Beatrice! I should have known … I am so glad it is like this for you. Oh, Beatrice, I am so glad,’ he said. Saladin stretched his neck in relief at the suddenly loosened rein. And I smiled tenderly at Harry.

‘Thank God we are now both free of sin,’ I said piously. ‘Now at last we can love each other and be together as we should.’

The horses moved forward and we rode companionably, side by side. We came from the gloom of the wood into God’s own sunlight and Harry looked around him at the sweet rolling sunny turf as if he thought the New Jerusalem had dawned on him, with the golden light of a sinless paradise all around us.

‘Now let us plan this race,’ I said sweetly, and we cantered forward to a shoulder of the downs to overlook the track that rises from the valley floor. From here we could see most of the route I planned for Tobermory and Dr MacAndrew’s Arab, and a punishing ride it would be. The race would start and end at the Hall and make the shape of a great figure of eight. The first loop was north from the Hall up the steep sandy tracks of the common land. The ground is soft as sugar there because it is deep sand on clay, and while neither horse would be fast on that going, I thought the shifting ground would tire the Arab. The common is used by the village people for their sheep, for the odd goat or two, for ill-fed cows and, of course, for game: birds, foxes, deer. It is mostly heather with bracken in the sunny, sheltered dips of the ground, and thick solid woods, mainly beech, of course, on the west slopes. The loop across the top of the common took in the open ground where the Arab’s quickness of turning would be of little use, and where Tobermory’s strong legs might set the fastest pace.

When we dropped down from the common there was a steep track downhill, which I thought could be taken no faster than a slithering canter — and I could trust Tobermory to handle that, for he had hunted over this land for four seasons — then there were two stiffish jumps into the parkland of Wideacre Hall: one over a wall, which was high, and one over a ditch, which was difficult to judge if you did not know it. Then there would be a good thundering gallop along the grass tracks of the woods until we broke free of the trees facing the south loop of the race, which would take us straight up the track to the top of the downs, a good long testing gallop, climbing steeply all the time. I expected both horses to be blown when they reached the top, but whoever had the lead then was likely to keep it. Ahead lay a smooth grassy track of springy downs turf for a couple of miles and then the descent back to the Hall through the beech coppice, which would be a tiring slither for horses and riders, then a thundering finish along the drive to the Hall.

Harry and I thought the entire circuit would take about two hours, and that the worst part for horse and rider would be the steep descent home. We gave John MacAndrew fair warning of this while the grooms were tacking up the horses, but he only laughed and said we were trying to scare him off.

Tobermory came out of the arched sandstone stable doorway like a bolt of copper. He was well rested and anxious to go, and Harry whispered to me to rein in hard or I should find myself halfway to London. Then he tossed me up into the saddle and held the reins while I shook out the crimson skirts of my habit and settled my hat more firmly on my head.

Then I saw Sea Fern.

Dr MacAndrew had told me he was a grey, but his coat was almost silver white with silky, sleek shadows on the powerful legs and shoulders. My eyes gleamed in appreciation and John MacAndrew laughed.

‘I think I can tell what I shall lose if you finish first, Miss Lacey,’ he said teasingly. ‘You would never make a gambler.’

‘I should think anyone would be glad to take that horse off you,’ I said longingly. My eyes took in the perfect sharp-featured face and the bright intelligent eyes. His neck was a perfect sickle held in by the groom, yet as strong as a bent bow. A lovely, lovely animal. John MacAndrew mounted without using the block in a stylish spring to the saddle. We measured each other and smiled.

Celia, Mama, the baby and Nurse were all on the terrace to see us stand shoulder to shoulder as we waited for Harry’s signal. Tobermory pranced at the bit and Sea Fern sidled with excitement. Harry stood still on the terrace, a handkerchief in his raised hand. Then he dropped his arm and I felt Tobermory jump as I let him go and he felt the spur.

We thundered through the woods at a tightly controlled canter. Sea Fern’s white forelegs were first over the park wall and I had expected that. But I had not thought he would hold his pace so well up the punishing slope to the common, nor that he would seem so little tired at the top. At the crest of the hill he snorted at the sand and then took the track at a gallop. It is a long river of sand, widened as a firebreak, and although Tobermory put his head down and thundered at it, Sea Fern held off our challenge, his hoofs throwing silver sand into my face for the two, maybe three miles of it. Both he and Tobermory were blowing, but Tobermory did not pass him until the ground started to slope downwards towards the park.

Some of our people were cutting firewood and at the sudden glimpse of them Sea Fern shied, and then reared. Tobermory, steady as a rock, did not check, and I heard them cheer as I thundered downhill, well in the lead, and Tobermory reared up to leap the wall into the pale of the park. He held the advantage in a long hard gallop through the park and when we started up the hill to the downs. I was sure, with a laugh caught in my throat, that the race was over for Sea Fern. Then we reached the top and the smooth ride was before us. Tobermory was panting but he felt the downs turf under his hoofs and his head went up. We thundered along the track, but I could hear hoofs behind us, and they were gaining on us. Sea Fern was blowing foam and John MacAndrew was leaning forward like a jockey to get every inch of speed from him, urging him harder and harder on our heels. The noise of the chase reached Tobermory and he shook his mane at the challenge and plunged into his fast hunting stride — the top speed of a staying gallop. It was not enough. By the time the track started to slope downwards to the woods, Sea Fern was at Tobermory’s shoulder.

As we plunged into the gloom of the woods I tightened my hold on Tobermory, keeping a careful watch under his hoofs for dangerous roots and treacherous patches of mud. I watched on my own account for low branches that might sweep me from the saddle or slap in my face. But John MacAndrew took no care. He took the lead in a mad downward dash and fixing his priceless horse at that slippery track as if he no longer cared for it. The beautiful animal slithered and stumbled, held to a relentless pace, and I could not, dared not, match that breakneck speed. Among the jumbling pictures in my mind of splashy puddles and low head-chopping branches, some corner of my mind said swiftly and precisely, ‘Why? Why is John MacAndrew riding this playful race so hard?’

By the time we were through the lodge gates with Sarah Hodgett calling, ‘Go on, Miss Beatrice!’ as I thundered past, the lead was too big to close. Sea Fern’s powerful galloping hindquarters gleamed like white silk in the flickering sun and shadows of the drive as we dashed towards the house, and the doctor on his Arab was reining in at the terrace a clear couple of lengths before me.

I laughed in unfeigned delight. I was dirty; I could feel wet mud caking in spots all over my face. My hat had tumbled off somewhere and a stable lad would have to search for it tomorrow. My hair had come unpinned during the wild ride and was a tangle of chestnut curls over my shoulders. Tobermory was creamy with sweat, his bright coat bathed in it. Sea Fern was shuddering with panting breaths. Dr MacAndrew’s fair skin was scarlet with heat and excitement and his eyes — winner’s eyes — were sparkling blue.

‘What is your forfeit, then?’ I gasped, as soon as I could draw breath. ‘You rode like a demon for it. What is it that you want so badly?’

He slid from his saddle and reached up to me to lift me down. I slid into his arms and felt my face crimson, fuelled by the breathless excitement of the race and the smell of our hot trembly bodies, and the pleasure of a man’s arms around me again.

‘I claim your glove,’ he said. But he said it with an emphasis that stopped my incredulous laughter and made me look at him intently.

‘First the glove,’ he said, stripping the scarlet kid gauntlet from my hand, ‘and later, Miss Lacey, your hand in marriage.’

I caught my breath on a cry of outrage but he coolly pocketed the forfeit as if men proposed to ladies in this way every day of the year. And before I could say anything, Harry and the whole pack of them were tumbling into earshot and I could say nothing.

There was nothing, in any case, that I wanted to say. While I retired to change my gown, wash my face and pin my hair, I wasted no time in planning a reply. His cool tone made it clear that none was required. I stood in no danger of breaking my heart over a man who owned no land, least of all someone who would neither inherit nor buy Wideacre. If this young, enchanting doctor ever proposed he would find himself gently, kindly refused. But in the meantime … I twisted the hair nearest my face into ringlets around my fingers and chuckled with unrestrained laughter … in the meantime, it was all delightful, and I must hurry or I would be late for tea.

It might have meant nothing more to me than a light-hearted jest but the race made the young doctor an accepted member of our family circle. Although Mama never spoke, I knew she regarded him as her future son-in-law and his presence in the house freed her from her persistent, unacknowledged fears. So it was a happy summer for all of us. Harry’s worries about the land were lifted once he saw it back under my confident control and knew he could rely on me to protect him from errors of ignorance with either the precious fields or the people. The vines were doing well despite the strange English soil, and it was a triumph of Harry’s experimental enthusiasm over my love for the old ways that I was happy to concede. Whether we would have enough sun to turn the little buds of grapes into fat, sweet, green fruit was something not even Harry’s confidence could guarantee. But it was a fair chance and one worth taking, which might produce a new crop and even a new product for Wideacre.

Mama was happy in Harry’s smiles and in my settled contentment. But her main role was that of doting grandmother. I realized only now how much her tenderness must have been constrained by my hurtful independence, and by the convention of leaving children out of reach in the nursery. Under the loving, indulgent regime of Celia, the little angel was never banished, except for meals and bedtime. She was never left to cry alone in the darkness of the nursery. She was never abandoned to the absent-minded care of servants. Little Julia’s life was one long banquet of cuddles and kisses and games and songs from either her adoring papa, her loving mama, or her equally besotted grandmama. And seeing the glow of happiness in my mother’s face and the gurgles of delight that came from the cradle, one would need a heart of stone not to see that the love that flowed between them all was a blessing indeed.

I missed her. I was not one of those women whose hip is empty unless they have a child astride it, God knows, but little Julia seemed to me to be a special child. No, more than that. She was the bone of my bone in a way I could not fathom. I could see the glint of my russet in her hair; I could see my easy happy delight in Wideacre in her gurgles when she was left outside in the cradle. She was my child through and through and I missed her when I knew that Celia’s eyes were sharp upon me, and that I was not allowed either to raise her from her cradle or play with her, and not — emphatically not — to take her out on the land and give her a little taste, the smallest of tastes, of a proper Wideacre childhood.

As for Celia, she seemed in a haze of happiness. The baby consumed her time and attention and she had developed almost miraculous powers of sensitivity where Julia was concerned. She would excuse herself from the table to go to the nursery when no one but her had heard the faintest cry. The whole upper floor of the house seemed to murmur with lullabies that summer as Celia sang to the baby, and moved around the baby’s room in a continual hum of melodic half-laughter. Under Celia’s tentative and diffident prompting, one room after another was redecorated and cleaned and the heavy old furniture of my father and grandfather was replaced with the light fragile styles of the fashion. More profit to me, who snapped up the rejected wooden chests and tables for the increasingly cluttered west wing, but no damage to the house, which gleamed with a new lightness.

Celia delighted Mama with her enthusiasm for ladylike pursuits. They worked like scullery maids over a new altar cloth for the church, first designing, then drawing, then stitching. I did a few odd running stitches in the evening in the sections where mistakes would not show, but every day Mama and Celia had the great swathe of material stretched between them and had their heads bent in pious bondage.

When they were not stitching they were reading aloud as if addicted to their own voices, or ordering the carriage to give Baby a little airing, or paying calls, or picking the flowers, or practising songs, or all the old time-wasting, energy-consuming, pretty little activities that compose a lady’s life. Why should I complain? They were happy tripping around on the little treadwheel of meaningless duties, and Celia’s devotion to her sewing, to her house and to her mama-in-law freed me from many a weary hour in the small parlour.

Celia’s girlish diffidence and her ready acceptance of second, nay, fourth place in the household, meant that she never clashed with Mama. She had already learned in France that her wishes and wants would always come second to mine and Harry’s, and indeed she never seemed to expect anything else. Now, far from being a confident young wife in her first home, she was more like a courteous guest, or a poor relation allowed to live with the family in return for unremitting civility and little chores. On no area of my power — not the keys and the accounts of the cellar, nor the kitchen, the store rooms and the servants’ wages — did she ever encroach. No area of power of Mama’s — the selection and training of the indoor staff, the planning of the menus, the decisions about cleaning and care of the house — did she ever threaten. She had been trained hard, Celia. She would never forget the unwelcoming neglect she had met at Havering Hall, and she expected little better of her new home.

With such poor expectations, she was agreeably surprised. Mama was ready to defend her rights against the interloper, but she found that Celia asked for nothing, took nothing, expected nothing. The only time she ever whispered so much as a tentative suggestion was when Harry’s convenience and comfort would benefit, and then she had a ready ally in Harry’s doting mama, who welcomed any information about her darling boy’s preferences.

And Stride, who was an experienced butler and knew Quality when he saw it, would nod his head and advise her. The other servants followed his lead and showed her proper respect. No one would ever fear Celia. But everyone loved her. Her willingness to accept whatever standards or behaviour Harry, Mama or I saw fit made all our lives easier for her sunny presence in the house.

And I, too, was happy. In the morning I generally rode out to see the fields or check the fences, or up to the downs to see the sheep. In the afternoon I did the accounts, wrote letters of business and saw whoever had waited patiently in the lobby room by the side entrance. Before I dressed for dinner I would stroll out with Harry in the rose garden, in the growing shrubbery, or perhaps as far as the Fenny, talking business and gossip. In the evening I would sit opposite Celia on Harry’s right hand and dine like a princess on the wonderful food that had come to Wideacre with the new cook.

After dinner, Celia would play and sing to us, or Harry would read, or Harry and I would talk low-voiced in the window seat while Celia and Mama played duets on the piano or tackled another section of stitchery.

All that sweet warm summer we were on a pinnacle of domestic happiness, without conflict, without sin. Anyone watching us, as young Dr MacAndrew did, with a warm steady look in his pale eyes, would have thought we had found some secret of love that we could live so tenderly and easily together. Even my desires were quiescent in that golden time. The warmth of John MacAndrew’s smiles to me, the tender tone in his voice when he spoke to me, the respectable excitement of a twilit walk in the garden with him, all seemed enough in that lovely late summer. I was not in love, of course not. But his way of making me laugh, the way his eyes met mine, the way his riding coat sat on his shoulders, all tiny trivial things, added up to some sensation that made me smile when I saw him riding up the drive to dine with us. And his smile on parting, the slight pressure of his fingers and the gentle touch of his lips on my hand, were all part of a stage of courtship too delightful to be hurried.

Of course it would end. If he went on down this road he would make a serious proposal of marriage and have to be seriously refused, and then this innocent, pleasurable time would be over. But while it lasted, while each day brought me a visit from him, or a book he had promised, the loan of his beloved Sea Fern for a treat, or a posy of flowers, I found I woke each morning with a smile and the recollection of some phrase he used, a mental picture of him. And I started my day in a small ripple of pleasure.

I had never before been wooed by a man of my own class and so I was new to the trivial delights of a Quality courtship. The way he touched my fingers when I passed him a teacup, or the way his eyes would meet mine in a room full of people. I liked knowing that the second I came into a room, perhaps at one of the assemblies at Chichester, he would see me and make his way to me. Or if he were in a set preparing to dance I smiled at the secret knowledge that wherever I was in the room, whether before his eyes or behind him, he was acutely aware of my presence. Then, when tea was served, he would be at my chair with a little plateful of my favourite cakes and the eyes of the whole room on us both.

I was so entranced by this courtship of tenths of inches, which progressed invisibly, slowly, that I relaxed my awareness of Celia and Harry. In this new, trivial pleasure I had forgotten my old agonized desire for Harry. In the certainty of my mastery of the land — now accepted by everyone — I no longer needed to dominate the Master of Wideacre himself. Harry could be my partner, my colleague. If I was secure on the land I did not need him as a lover.

Of all people it was Celia, who had done so much to create this oasis of peace, who spoiled it. Of all people who suffered from it, it was she who lost as much as anyone. Of course, being Celia, the mistake came from love and tenderness. But if she had stayed silent that once, stayed silent for that one summer, it could all, even then, have been a different story.

But not Celia. Her mama had tackled her about the separate bedrooms she and Harry occupied. My mama had mentioned the need of a son to follow the triumph of the angel baby. Her own honest conscience reminded her nightly at her prayer time that she had not done her duty by Harry since the baby he loved was not their child. But most importantly for Celia, for Harry and, of course, for me, was that she was learning to love him.

Harry, viewed every day from breakfast to dinner, was neither tyrant nor monster. She heard him being reproved by bis mama for being late for lunch; she heard his sister mock his newfangled ideas on farming; she saw him accept reproof and teasing with unshakeable sunny good nature. The arrangement of their married life he accepted with unswerving cheerfulness. He never unlocked the adjoining door between their two bedrooms, although she knew he had the key. He always entered her room from the corridor and he always knocked first. When he greeted her in the morning he kissed her hand with respect, and when he bade her goodnight he kissed her forehead with tenderness. We had been home three months and he had never said a cross word in her hearing, or showed one spark of malice or one edge of spite. In growing amazement at her luck, Celia discovered she was married to one of the sweetest men ever born. Of course she loved him.

All of this I should have foreseen as clearly as I saw Harry’s smile of tenderness when he watched her walking the baby. All of it I should have heard in the way her voice lilted when she spoke of him. But I saw and heard nothing until the late September day when Celia met me in the rose garden. She had a pair of ineffectual but elegant silver scissors in her hand and a basket, and a straw bonnet tied to shade her face. I was walking back from the paddock in my riding habit after checking one of the hunters, who I thought might have sprained a tendon. Celia delayed me on my way to the stable to order a poultice, to offer me a buttonhole of late-flowering white roses and I sniffed their creamy smell, smiling my thanks.

‘Don’t they smell like butter?’ I said dreamily, with the full fat flowers pressed to my face. ‘Butter and cream and a hint of something sharp like lime.’

‘You make it sound like one of Cook’s puddings,’ said Celia, smiling.

‘Quite right, too,’ I said. ‘She certainly should make a pudding of roses. How lovely to eat roses. They smell as if they would be melting and sweet.’

Celia, amused at my sensual relish, sniffed a little bud to please me, and snipped another bloom and put in in her basket.

‘How is Saladin’s leg?’ she asked, noticing my dirty hands and the halter.

‘I’m on my way to order a poultice,’ I said.

Some movement in the first floor of the Hall caught my attention and I stared at the house. Someone was going down the corridor with a great pile of clothing and bedding, followed by someone else with another pile, and someone behind with yet another. As I watched, they passed one window and then another in an extraordinary procession.

I could have asked Celia, but it did not occur to me that she might know what was going on inside the house when I did not. So I said, ‘Excuse me,’ and went with quick steps to the open front door and up the stairs to the corridor. The place was in utter confusion with bedding everywhere, a wardrobe blocking the door of Celia’s bedroom and a great heap of Harry’s clothes on Mama’s bed.

‘What is this?’ I asked the chambermaid. She was half buried under a heap of Celia’s starched petticoats and dipped a curtsy to me like a linen basket falling.

‘Moving Lady Lacey’s things, Miss Beatrice,’ she said. ‘She is moving into your mama’s room with Master Harry.’

‘What?’ I said incredulously. The pile of linen bobbed again as the girl curtsied and repeated what she had said. I had heard her the first time. It was not my ears that had failed to hear, but my mind that could not believe what I was hearing. Celia and Harry moving into Mama’s bedroom together could mean only one thing; that Celia had overcome her fear of Harry’s sexuality — and that was not possible.

I spun on my heel and clattered down the stairs again and out into the sunlight. Celia was still snipping roses like an ignorant cupid in the Garden of Eden.

‘The servants are moving your things into the master bedroom to share with Harry,’ I said baldly, and waited for her start of shock. But the face she turned to me under the broad brim of her sunhat was utterly untroubled. She even had the hint of a smile playing around her lips.

‘Yes,’ she said calmly. ‘I asked them to do it this afternoon while you were all out. I thought it would cause you all less inconvenience.’

‘You ordered it!’ I exclaimed incredulously, and then I bit the inside of my lip and stopped.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Celia calmly and then her eyes flew to my face. ‘I thought it would be all right,’ she said anxiously. ‘Your mama has no objection and I did not think I should have confirmed it with you. I hope you are not offended, Beatrice? I did not think you would be affected in any way at all.’

Words of complaint died in my mind as I recognized that Celia would think precisely that — that I could hardly be affected if she chose to sleep in the same bed as her husband. But that bed was the great master bed of Wideacre where Squires and their Ladies had lain for years. In that bed Celia became the first lady on the land, and that affected me. In that bed, in Harry’s arms, she became a true wife to him and the pleasure of his nights. And that affected me. As his Lady, as his lover, she made me redundant. And the spectre of a suitor riding towards us to take me away was too real for me to risk losing Harry’s need for my company.

‘Why are you doing this, Celia?’ I said urgently. ‘You do not have to do this, you know. Just because my mama, or your mama, are anxious for another grandchild, there is no need to do this. You have years ahead of you, you do not have to rush into Harry’s bed this summer. You are the mistress of your own house now. You do not have to do any duty with is repugnant to you, to which you object.’

Celia’s cheeks flushed as pink as the rose in her hand. And she was definitely smiling, though her eyes were turned down.

‘But I do not object, Beatrice,’ she whispered very low. ‘I am very happy to say I do not object.’ She paused and her cheeks flushed more rosy than ever. ‘I do not object at all,’ she said.

From some recess of lies in my soul I found a smile and pinned it on my wooden face. Celia gave a little gasp of a laugh and turned from me and went out of the garden. At the gate she paused and shot me a quick, loving smile. ‘I knew you would be so glad for me,’ she said so low I could hardly hear her. ‘I think I can make your brother very happy, Beatrice, my dear. And at last now it is truly my happiness to try.’

Then she was gone; loving, light-stepping, exquisite, desirable, and now desiring. And I was lost.

Harry’s strong points were not imagination or fidelity. With Celia as pretty and wholesome as a peach beside him in his bed every night he would forget the sensuous delights we had shared. She would become the centre of his world and when Mama suggested a marriage for me, Harry would enthusiastically endorse the idea, thinking every marriage as perfect as his own. I would have lost my hold on Harry when his one desire was his lovely wife. And I had lost the one hold I had on Celia that I thought secure: her terrified frigidity. If she could giggle at the thought of Harry in her bed, she was no longer a child one could scare with a bogeyman. She was a woman and she was learning her own desires. In Harry she would find a loving tutor.

I stood alone in the garden swinging the halter. Somehow I had to salvage some grip on Harry out of this slide into domestic bliss. Celia could give him love; she was overflowing with tenderness and the need to love someone. She was far more loving than I ever could be, would be, would ever want to be. Celia could give him pleasure — a night with her sweet kisses and delicate lovely body would be more than most men get in a lifetime, outside their dreams.

But there had to be something I could do that she could not. There had to be some hold I could keep on Harry even if he was an uxorious husband and a besotted lover. I had held Harry in my thrall for two years and I knew him better than anyone. There had to be some string in my hand that I could pull to set him dancing to my tune. I stood like a statue of Diana the huntress: tall, proud, lovely and hungry, while the September shadows lengthened across the garden and the sun burned low over the roof of Wideacre making the stone slates rosy in the light. Then the swinging halter stilled and my head came up and I smiled into the burning face of the setting sun. I said softly to myself one word: ‘Yes.’