Wideacre

12

Between Shaw the keeper, and me, Harry made a reasonable fist of it, and our first day out in October was a long glorious run that started on the common and then chased in a great sweep over the fields back to the common and a kill on the edge of the park where the Wideacre woods are encroaching on the heather and bracken. He was an old dog fox that one. I swear I hunted him one season before with Papa. He got away then from the slower old-fashioned pack but now he was three years older and Papa was dead, and even unskilled Harry, who totally lacks a hunter’s instinct, could see that the wily animal was heading for a stream to lose the scent in the water.

‘Send them in, Harry!’ I yelled above the clamour of the pack and the thunder of hoofs, the wind whipping my words away.

The horn blasted, ‘Too-roo! Too-roo!’ and the horses leaped forward; the hounds spread out with their final full-cry killing run, and the old fox strained to a final burst of speed. He nearly made it too, but they had him at the side of the stream, and Harry waded thigh-deep among squealing, hungry hounds to cut the brush and pass it, still bloody, up to me. I nodded my thanks, and took the prize in my gloved hand. I have had the first kill of the season every hunt since I was eleven when Papa smeared my face with the disgusting, rank, sticky blood.

Mama had gasped then, when she saw me, as stained as any savage, and she had neared open complaint when Papa sternly told her that I was not to be washed.

‘The child smells of fox,’ Mama said. Her voice, tremulous with anger, had dropped to a whisper.

‘It is the tradition,’ Papa said firmly. That was enough for him and it was enough for me too. God knows I was not a squeamish little doll, but when he had rubbed the blood on my face from the base of the hot tail I had swayed in my saddle with sickly faintness. But I did not fall. And I did not wash.

I solved the problem in a way that, looking back, seems typical of my desire to please my papa and yet be true to myself. Papa had told me that the tradition was that the beastly blood stayed on until it wore off. I thought for some hours while the blood congealed into crusty scabs on my young skin, then I made my way down to the old sandstone drinking trough by the stables. I sat beside it, put my face to it, and rubbed the delicate skin of my cheeks and forehead against its rough sides until I was sore and scraped, but clean.

‘Did you wash, Beatrice?’ Papa asked me sternly when we met at breakfast the following day.

‘No, Papa, I wore it away,’ I said. ‘May I start to wash again now?’

His great lovable, loving shout of laughter rattled the sash windows and the silver coffee pots.

‘Wore it away, did you, my little darling!’ he roared, and then subsided into chuckles, wiping his eyes on his napkin. ‘Yes, yes, you may wash now. You have satisfied tradition; and that’s good. And you have got your own way too, and that’s comical.’

I seemed years away from this scene and from my papa’s love as I sat in the hard winter sunshine and accepted the brush from Harry. The smell of the warm freshly killed fox had brought it all flooding back to me, but it was all long gone. Long lost, and long past.

‘A good run, Miss Lacey,’ said one of the Havering boys, Celia’s step-brother George.

‘Yes, indeed,’ I said smiling.

‘And how you do ride!’ he said with worship in his eyes. ‘I can’t keep up with you! When you took that last hedge I had to shut my eyes. I was certain that low bough would sweep you off!’

I laughed at the recollection.

‘I had my eyes shut too!’ I confessed. ‘I get so excited I forget to take care. I put Tobermory at the hedge without even seeing the tree. When I realized there was no room for us between the hedge and the low branches it was too late to do anything about it except keep my head down and hope we squeezed through. We just did, though I felt the twigs scratch my back.’

‘I hear you have been racing too,’ said George, nodding to John MacAndrew, who rode up to us. The sun seemed to shine with sudden new warmth, and we smiled into each other’s eyes.

‘Just a friendly race,’ I said. ‘But Dr MacAndrew rides for high stakes.’

George’s bright eyes flicked from one to another of us.

‘I hope you did not lose Tobermory!’ he said.

‘No,’ I said, with a private smile to John MacAndrew. ‘But I’ll not be betting blind against the doctor again.’

George laughed, and at last took himself off to compliment Harry on the run, and I was left alone with John. But it was the trained doctor, not the lover who spoke.

‘You’re pale,’ he said. ‘Do you feel unwell?’

‘No, I’m very well,’ I said, smiling to reassure him and to support the lie. Even as I spoke I felt a swimmy sensation of faintness and nausea.

‘I can see you are not,’ he said curtly. He dismounted and held out peremptory arms to me. I shrugged my shoulders and slid down from the saddle and let him lead me to a fallen tree. Once seated I felt better and drew a couple of deep breaths of the sharp autumn air, smelling the bright, cold exciting smell of dry leaves.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked. He had not released my hand after leading me to the seat, and his sensitive fingers had discreetly taken my pulse.

‘Oh, let be,’ I said, and pulled my hand away. ‘I cannot afford a weekly consultation, doctor. I am queasy and headachey because we have harvested the first of the wine and I was tasting the young vintage last night. It tastes like vinegar; it needs a West Indian island full of sugar to make it sweet enough; it costs a fortune to produce and it leaves me with the vilest headache in the world — on account of the loss we have made on it all, and the damage it does to my liver.’

He laughed out loud at my ill humour, quite unoffended. Then kindly, sensibly, he left me alone. He moved off to chat with some of the others and I was free to lean back against a branch of the tree.

I had lied, of course. We had indeed drunk Harry’s bitter unsuccessful wine last night, but that was not the cause of my early-morning queasiness and my faintness, and the tenderness in my breasts. I was with child again, and I felt sick because of that nauseous, tiring condition, and worse at the idea of the condition. It cost me every ounce of courage to smile and joke with Harry and George and John MacAndrew with the sickness from this vile growth inside me.

I was not surprised George could not follow my lead. I had been riding for a fall. A good bruising tumble that would shake this parasite free and leave me blooded and clean and whole again. But Tobermory was too sure-footed and I was too good a rider. I had taken some incredible jumps and was still here in the autumn sunshine, as lovely as ever, as virginal-looking as Diana the huntress — but one month pregnant. My rage at the injustice of my continual fertility while Celia, the deserving wife, could only play host to my cuckoo made the nausea on my tongue taste like fire. In recapturing Harry’s slavish adoration, I had created another problem. This beastly, intractable, insoluble growth in my belly had not shaken loose on my hell-for-leather ride so maybe it was as strong a child as Julia had been, who had clung on through many a breathless, dangerous, thundering gallop and been born none the worse for it. I had not had the luck of a tumble. I should have to take some evil old peasant’s dirty mixture, and grit my teeth through the ensuing, solitary pain.

She took some finding, for with the disappearance of Ralph’s mother Meg from Acre no other old crone had emerged skilled in the necessary borderline arts. Ironically I found her by pretending to Mary, Mrs Hodgett’s pretty daughter, that I wanted a love potion. She looked to me like the sort of girl who would hardly need such magic either. But just as I had foreseen, she knew the name of an old dame who lived in a shanty hut on Havering Common.

Forewarned by my knowledge of the ways of the country, I expected a dirty hovel, but the old witch’s shanty was worse than the sties where we keep our pigs. Mud-floored, walled with slabs of turf and bits of bracken, and with branches of trees plugged with moss and turf for a roof. As soon as I entered the door, stooping under the low roof, I knew it was a mistake to come, and I did not believe she could do it. But there was nowhere else to go, and no other option to try. So I went through with it. The disgusting old witch produced a stone flask stoppered with a scrap of dirty cloth, and hid the silver shillings I tossed on the floor somewhere among her rags. I carried it home as if it were poison, and in the privacy of my bedroom drank the lot as she had told me.

It was as bad as I had feared. I was ill that night and had a day of retching, and the flux, but no little mess of half-made child came away. I still carried it with me. We seemed utterly inseparable. I was exhausted by the pregnancy and by the forty-eight hours of illness but I still had to ride back to that dirty cottage and see what the old witch could do now.

The true answer was nothing — except another bout of illness. She recommended another try, even put her stale mouth to my ear and assured me that a blunt knife pushed gently inside, as she would promise to do, would cause no pain, or hardly any pain at all, and would free me from the incubus. But I had had enough. I suspected, rightly I think, that for the fees I could pay she would continue trying until the baby was indeed dead — or until I was. I did not trust her dirty room where she mashed the weeds she called herbs. And I emphatically did not trust her with a rusty knife. So I had done with her, and when I felt well enough to think straight again — which took four miserable days — I put my mind to other possible means.

I thought, of course, of Celia. Dear little Celia, so sweet and so loving. I remembered her instant acceptance last time, and her loving response to Julia. It was a possibility that she might be glad of another child. My head lifted, and the glint of a smile crossed my face. It was another chance for me to put my child in the heir’s cradle. If I could have avoided the pregnancy, I would have done so. If I could have lost the child I would have done so. But if he was hanging on, determined to grow, then he could inherit the earth indeed — or at any rate the fairest, sweetest corner of it.

I was more cautious this time. My pride and my peace had been dealt a stinging blow by the birth of a useless girl. Never again would I worship my own swelling body, seeing in its new shape the certainty of my future. But I could not suppress a little rising smile, at the thought that having had one girl, surely the chances were greater that this time my brother and I had bred true — had conceived a son.

I could not wait. I had conceived in September, and it was already mid-October — I dared not. Celia had to be told and some plan to explain our departure from Wideacre had to be cobbled together, and it had to be done quickly. I called out to one of the grooms who had followed the hunt with a spare horse. He touched his cap, and lifted me into the saddle. I told him to tell the Master that I was tired and would hack gently home, and I left without saying goodbye.

But I had not reckoned on John. He forced no farewell or explanation from me, but when I glanced back at the ring of huntsmen under the sweeping trees I saw that Sea Fern was standing to one side, away from the bustle of the hounds and the round of silver flasks. He was watching me ride away, and in the tilt of his head I saw not the blind gaze of the lover but the hard, analytical scrutiny of the professional man. I straightened my back in the saddle, conscious of his eyes upon me, and thought yet again that Celia and I would have to hurry. It would be tedious indeed to be off on my travels again, and difficult to arrange. But Wideacre, with the hard sharp eyes of Dr MacAndrew on me, was unsafe for any secret.

I waited to be sure I could have Celia to myself for a good period of time, and after dinner asked her to come to my office on the pretext of some brocades I wanted her to help me choose. The parlourmaid served us Bohea tea at the great rent table and Celia smiled at the contrast of the pretty red porcelain against the heavy masculine furniture of the room.

‘Well, it is an office,’ I said, half apologetically. ‘If I had the labourers into my parlour they would break those delicate chairs and tread mud on the carpet.’

‘I don’t know how you can do it,’ murmured Celia, glancing at the ledgers piled on one side of my desk. ‘I should think it is so difficult to work out where all the money is coming from, and where it is being spent! And so boring!’

‘I find it hard, certainly,’ I said, telling an easy lie. ‘But I am happy to do it for it frees Harry from the worry of it. But, Celia, I really asked you to come here because I wanted to talk to you alone.’

Her velvet-brown eyes were instantly concerned.

‘Of course, Beatrice,’ she said. ‘Is there anything wrong?’

‘Not with me,’ I said firmly. ‘It is you I wanted to talk about. My dear, we have been home for four months, and you have shared a room with Harry for nearly two. I just wondered if you had noticed any signs to tell you that you might be expecting a child?’

Celia’s little face flushed as scarlet as a poppy and her eyes fell to her clasped hands in her lap.

‘No,’ she said very low. ‘No, no signs, Beatrice. I cannot understand it.’

‘Are you quite healthy?’ I asked her, with affected concern.

‘I thought so,’ she said miserably. ‘But yet I do not seem able to conceive. Harry says nothing, but I know he must be wondering about an heir. Mama suggested eating a lot of salt and I have done so, but it seems to make no difference. What makes it worst of all, Beatrice, is that you and I know that I did not even conceive Julia. I have been married a full year, and not conceived a child.’

I wrinkled my forehead, my eyes warm with concern.

‘My dear,’ I said, ‘perhaps you should take some medical advice. John MacAndrew or, if you preferred, a London specialist?’

‘How can I!’ Celia exclaimed. ‘Any doctor would be certain to ask about the conception of the first child and I cannot tell him that I have no first child when Julia is in the nursery, and Harry believes her to be his!’

‘Oh, Celia!’ I said. ‘This is what I feared. But what will you do?’

‘I can see nothing that I can do,’ she said. She reached in the pocket of her little silk pinny and brought out a handkerchief, a tiny scrap of lace. She wiped her wet cheeks and tried to smile at me, but her lower lip trembled like a child’s.

‘I pray and pray,’ she said low. ‘But my prayers are not answered. It is a dreadful thought that because of my inadequacy Wideacre will pass to your cousins. If I had known that I would so fail Harry as a wife I should never have married him. I would have spared him that disappointment.’ She ended with a little sob and pressed her handkerchief to her mouth.

‘But I know so little of these things, Beatrice,’ she said. ‘And I cannot ask my mama. A year is not so very long, is it? I could just have been unlucky so far?’

‘No,’ I said, squashing that hope as firmly as I could. ‘I believe that most women are most fertile in the first year of their marriage. Since you have not conceived yet, I think it is unlikely that you ever will.’

I gave her a pause for her to wipe her eyes again, her head bowed under the sentence I had delivered. Then I held out a ray of hope.

‘What if I were to conceive again, and we were to go away and I were to give you the child?’ I said, musing aloud.

Her tear-filled eyes came up to my face and she managed a watery giggle.

‘Really, Beatrice!’ she said. ‘You are too shocking!’

‘I know,’ I said impatiently. ‘But I am thinking of you, you and Harry. If I were to be betrothed, or even married, I would be prepared, indeed I would be happy to solve your most dreadful problem by giving you my child.’

‘No,’ she said, with a determined shake of her head. ‘No, it would never work. It could never work. It could not be arranged.’

‘These are just details,’ I said, containing my impatience. ‘I say it could be arranged. I could arrange it. Would it not be a relief to you to be able to bring another baby home to Wideacre? And if it were a boy you could bring an heir home to Harry!’

She looked at me doubtfully, and I felt a glimmer of confidence and hope.

‘Can you be serious, Beatrice?’ she asked.

‘I am hardly likely to joke, when your life and your marriage are in such desperate crisis,’ I said, trying to overwhelm her with despair. ‘I see you are miserable; I see Harry anxious. I see that Wideacre will be taken from Harry’s line and given to distant cousins. Of course I am serious.’

Celia rose from her chair and came to stand behind me. She put her arms around my neck and leaned over the back of my chair to rest her damp cheek against my hot one.

‘That is so very good of you,’ she said with emphasis. ‘Very generous, and very loving, and very like you and your sweet nature.’

‘Yes?’ I said. ‘So we could do it?’

‘No,’ she said, sadly and softly. ‘We could not.’

I turned in my chair to look up at her. Her face was sad, but she was resigned to her sadness.

‘I could not, Beatrice,’ she said simply. ‘You have forgotten that to carry out such a deception I should have to lie to Harry. I would put another man’s child in Harry’s home and that would be a betrayal of him as surely as if I had been unchaste. I could not do it, Beatrice.’

‘You did it before,’ I said crudely. She winced as if I had struck her.

‘I know I did, and that was wrong,’ she said simply. ‘In my fear of marriage and in my concern for you I committed a most dreadful sin against my husband whom I now love more than anything else in the world. I should not have done it, and sometimes I think that my punishment is not only to live with the consciousness of that sin, but also to have to live with my barrenness. I try to atone for it by loving Julia as well as if she were indeed my own precious daughter, and by never lying again to Harry as long as I live. But I know well that I should not have done it. And I should never do such a thing again, whatever the temptation.’

She sighed a deep breath and she wiped her cheeks again with the wet scrap of lace.

‘You are so good, so generous, to suggest such a thing, Beatrice,’ she said gratefully. ‘It is like you to think nothing of yourself and everything of me. But your generosity is misplaced this time. It would not be a great, a generous gift. It would be leading me into dreadful error.’

I tried to nod and smile sympathetically, but my face muscles were stiff. I felt a rising tide of panic and fear of my pregnancy, and with it a rise of nausea. I was terrified of this growing child, which would neither die nor be given away. At the horror I had of the shame if I was forced to confess it. At my fear of what my mama would do, of what Harry would do. I should be sent away from my only home in shame. I should be tucked away in some dowdy market town with a pretend marriage ring on my finger and nothing from Wideacre around me except a monthly pension. I would have to wake in the morning to the noise of carts and carriages, and the birdsong of home would be far away. The sun that ripened the crops on the fields would shine through my dirty windows but its warmth would not feel the same. The rain, sliding down the window panes of my genteel little town house, would be filling the pools and hollows alongside the Fenny, but I would never drink that sweet water again. I could not bear it. This would be the end of me.

I looked at Celia, a slim figure in lilac silk, and I hated her for her obstinate morality, her silent, secret clarity about right and wrong, her wilful resistance to my needs. She was barren and I longed for that empty, clear, uncomplicated state. She was married and had traded independence and freedom for dependence and a quarterly pittance. But she had such security! Nothing would remove Celia; she would die in the Squire’s bedroom. While I, who loved the land and needed the land and longed for the land, would die of homesickness in some narow bed in a little room and be buried in soil that did not smell of home.

I had to get Celia out of the room or I would weep before her.

‘Good heavens,’ I said lightly. ‘Look at the time! Julia will be crying for you.’

It was the surest trigger in the world. Celia leapt to her feet and rustled to the door. She went with a light step, the pretty little moralist. Her sorrow was no heavy weight in her belly. Her pathetic conscience had blocked the only escape I could think of, and she had sunk my plan. And I sank too. Sank to my knees on the floor of my office, laid my head on the great carved chair that had always belonged to the Master of Wideacre, hid my face in my hands in that unyielding walnut seat and let my sobs shake me. I was utterly alone. I was desperate.

In the distance I heard a horse’s hoofs on the drive and raised my head to listen. Then, to my horror, John MacAndrew’s beautiful silver Arab horse was at my window, and John MacAndrew was looking down from his vantage point in the saddle to me kneeling, my dress creased, my eyes red, my head in my hands. His merry smile was wiped off his face and he wheeled Sea Fern around to the stable yard. I heard him shout for a groom and then open the side door of the west wing where the workers came for their pay. Then he was in the room without knocking and I was in his arms.

I should have pushed him away; I should have gone to my bedroom. I should have turned my face from him to look out of the window and said in cold tones that I had a headache, or the vapours, or anything, anything. Instead I clung to his lapels with two desperate hands and wept my heart out on his broad, comforting shoulder.

‘Oh, John,’ I said miserably. ‘I am so glad you are here.’

And he, wise, tender lover, said nothing, not one word other than soothing, meaningless noises like, ‘Hush, little darling’ and, ‘There, there, there.’

No one had smoothed my back while I sobbed since I had shrugged off my mama’s caresses at six or seven, and the strange tenderness made me even more weak with self-pity. Finally my sobs subsided and John sat himself in the master chair without a word of by-your-leave, and drew me, unresisting, hopelessly compromised, on to his knee. One firm arm was around my waist, the other hand came under my chin and turned my face to meet his scrutiny.

‘You have quarrelled with Harry? With your mama?’ he asked.

‘I can’t explain,’ I said, lost for a lie. ‘Don’t ask me. I just realized, because of something, that it is as you said: that I have no real home of my own. And I cannot bear to leave here.’

‘I understand about Wideacre,’ he said, his eyes scanning my tear-stained face. ‘I understand. Although I cannot imagine feeling the same way about land, I do sympathize.’

I buried my head in the comfortable warm softness of his woollen jacket shoulder. He smelt of cigars and of the fresh autumn air, and also a hint of sharp clean shaving soap. With the tears drying on my cheeks I felt a rising awareness of him as a man, and our sudden, surprising embrace. I laid my face close to his neck and touched his throat, almost shyly, with my lips.

‘Marry me, Beatrice,’ he said, low-voiced at the first touch of my mouth on his skin. He turned his face down and caught the secret little kiss on his lips. ‘I love you, and you know you love me. Say we can be married and I shall find some way to make you secure here, on the land you love.’

He kissed me gently on my sad mouth, and then, as the corners of my mouth curved up in a smile of pleasure, he kissed me harder. Then my arms were around his neck and I held his face to mine as he kissed every inch of my face: my sweet-smelling hair, my wet eyelids, my flushed cheeks, my ears, and then he pressed his mouth hard on mine and I tasted him with delight.

Then his mouth was on my face and my hair and the lobes of my ears, and I could not have told what I was doing or what I wanted. I was hardly an inexperienced girl, but somehow that clever man with the lazy veiled eyes had me off his knees and on the floor before the fire before I had decided, before I had even had time to think about what I was doing. And his hands were inside my gown, touching my breasts till I cried out for the feel of his weight coming down hard upon me. And his skilful doctor’s hands were ruffling up my skirt and my petticoats before I had time to protest, or words to protest or, God knows, the least idea in my head of protest.

The door was not locked; the curtains were not drawn. Anyone could have driven past the window and glanced in, or any servant could have come to the door with candles. I did not think. I could not think. All there was in my head was a ripple of laughter at the outrageous way John MacAndrew was behaving, and a more serious longing like a cry, a sweet clear cry from my heart to his that said, ‘Do not listen to all the refusals I have made to you. Let there be nothing more said between us. But love me, love me, love me.’

And then the one sane corner of my mind that was left noted that I was on the floor underneath him, and that my arms were around his neck, and my eyes were shut, and my lips smiling, and that a voice, my voice, was whispering his name and saying, ‘Love me.’ And he did.

And after I had cried out in pleasure — too loudly, too clearly, for safety — he said, very quietly but with great easiness and relief, ‘Oh, yes, yes, yes.’

And then we lay still for a very long time.

Then the logs on the fire shifted and I jumped out of my trance, and struggled to be up with a guilt-stricken wriggle. And he took his weight from me, and helped me to my feet and pulled my creased skirts down for me with as much courtesy as if we were in a ballroom, and with a little secret smile to acknowledge the incongruity of it too. Then he sat himself back in the master chair and drew me to him again, and I laid my face against his cheek and smiled with secret delight, and nearly laughed aloud for my happiness.

When I opened my eyes we smiled at each other like conspirators.

‘Beatrice, you strumpet, you have to be betrothed after that!’ he said, and his voice was husky.

‘I suppose I am then,’ I said.

We stayed in my office as the sun set over the western fields and the evening star came out low on the horizon. The fire burned down to red embers and neither of us troubled to toss another log on. We kissed gently, lightly, and we also kissed hard and with passion. We talked a little, of nothing. Of the run we had out hunting that day, of Harry’s incompetence as Master. He did not ask me why I had been crying, and we made no plans. Then I saw the candles lit in Mama’s parlour, and the silhouette of the maid drawing the curtains.

‘I thought it would hurt,’ I said lazily, with one passing thought for my reputation as a virgin.

‘After the horses you ride?’ he asked with a smile in his voice. ‘I am surprised you noticed it at all!’

I chuckled aloud at that, unladylike; but I felt too easy to pretend to be anything other than my sated, smiling self.

‘I must go,’ I said, scarcely stirring. As idle as a stroked cat on his knee. ‘They will wonder where I am.’

‘Shall I come, and shall we tell them?’ asked John. He helped me stand and smoothed the back panel of my dress where the silk was creased and crushed from our long courting.

‘Not today,’ I said. ‘Let it be just for you and me, today. Come for dinner tomorrow, and we can tell them then.’

He bowed in mock obedience, and let himself out of the west-wing door, with one final gentle kiss. His visit had passed unnoticed by Mama, by Harry and by Celia, but I knew that all the servants in the house and all the stable lads would know that he had been with me, and how long he had stayed. That was why no candles had been brought to my office as the light had faded. They had all conspired to leave John and me to court, like any village girl with her lover, in the gloaming by the fire. So, as is always the case, Wideacre people knew far more than Harry or Mama would ever have guessed.

Next day, when John came to take me for a drive before dinner, Harry, Mama and Celia paid little attention, but every servant in the house was smiling and peeping from the windows or hovering in the hall. Stride announced to me with elaborate ceremony that John was waiting in his curricle in the drive, and when he handed me up I felt as if I were being led to the altar. And I did not mind.

‘I trust you are not abducting me today,’ I said, and twirled my parasol, sunshine yellow, over my yellow bonnet and yellow woollen dress.

‘No, I’ll content myself with the sight of the sea from the top of your downs today,’ he said easily. ‘Do you think we can get the curricle up the bridle-way?’

‘It’ll be a squeeze,’ I said, measuring the shafts and the pair of glossy bays with my eyes. ‘But if you can drive a straight line it should be possible.’

He chuckled. ‘Oh, I’m a poor whipster, I know. Utterly incompetent. But you can always put a hand on the reins to keep me straight.’

I laughed outright. One of the things I liked about John MacAndrew the most was his immunity to my experimental slights. He had a hard core of resilience that meant he never winced at my attacks. He never even seemed challenged by them. He took them as part of a game we played — and he confessed incompetence or inadequacy without a blush, to bluff and double-bluff me into laughter and confession.

‘I beg your pardon,’ I said gaily. ‘I dare say you could drive your curricle and pair up the staircase without blowing the horses or scraping the varnish.’

‘I could indeed,’ he said modestly. ‘But I would never do it, Beatrice. I would never show you up. I know how ashamed you are of being cow-handed.’

I gave an irrepressible chuckle and gazed into his disconcertingly bright eyes. When he teased me in this way his eyes were as bright as if he were kissing me. Then he pulled the horses to a standstill before the fence and footstile up to the downs, and he climbed down from the driving seat and hitched the reins to the post.

‘They’ll keep,’ he said, dismissing hundreds of guineas of bloodstock as he held an arm to me as I dismounted. He held my hand as I climbed over the stile; walking up to the crest of the downs he still kept it. I should choose no other place for courtship. But I believe I should have been happier on that day if I had not been mere yards from where Ralph and I used to lie, hidden in bracken, or if I had not seen, a dozen yards to the right, the little hollow where I had slapped Harry’s face and ridden him to utter pleasure.

‘Beatrice,’ said John MacAndrew, and I turned my face up to his.

‘Beatrice …’ he said again.

It is as Ralph said. There are those who love and those who are loved. John MacAndrew was a great giver of love and all his wit and all his wisdom could not prevent him loving and loving and loving me, whatever the price. All I had to do was to say yes.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘I wrote to my father some weeks ago to acquaint him of my feelings, and he has treated me well; I should say generously,’ said John. ‘He has given me my shares of the MacAndrew Line outright, to do with what I will.’ He smiled. ‘It is a fortune, Beatrice. Enough to buy Wideacre over and over.’

‘It’s entailed; Harry could not sell,’ I said, my interest suddenly sharpened.

‘Aye, that’s all you think of, isn’t it?’ said John ruefully. ‘I meant only to tell you that it is a fortune enough to buy or rent any nearby property you desire. I have told my father that I shall never return to Scotland. I have told him that I will marry an Englishwoman. A proud, difficult, stubborn Englishwoman. And love her, if she will let me, every day of her life.’

I turned to him, my eyes bright with tenderness, my face smiling with love. After Ralph I had not expected to love again. With Harry, I had thought my passion would last for ever. But now I could scarcely remember the colour of their eyes. I could see nothing but John’s blue eyes bright with love and the smile of tenderness on his face.

‘And I shall live here?’ I asked, confirming my luck.

‘And you shall live here,’ he promised. ‘If the worst comes to the worst I shall buy the Wideacre pigsties for you, so long as we are on the sacred soil. Will that satisfy you?’ In impatience and in love he scooped me up into his arms and held me, hard as iron. In a great sweep of my familiar half-forgotten sensuality I felt my knees buckle beneath me when I was held by a passionate man again. When we broke apart we were both breathing in gasps.

‘So we are formally affianced?’ he demanded tersely. ‘You will marry me, and we will live here, and we will announce it at dinner?’

‘I will,’ I said, as solemnly as any bride. I thought of the baby heavy in my lower belly, and the warmth of desire lighting me up. And a leaping satisfaction in the MacAndrew fortune with which I could do so much for Wideacre.

‘I will,’ I said.

We clasped hands and turned back to the curricle. The horses had stood quiet, nibbling at the dark leaves of the autumn hawthorn hedge, and a blackbird sang sadly in the wood.

John had to back down the narrow track until we came to a gateway where we could turn, then he held the horses in hard down the length of the bridle-way until we were on the level sweep of the drive and heading for home.

The beech leaves fell around us like bridal rice as we passed slowly up the drive; John was in no hurry to be home. The copper beech trees were purple-black this autumn, while the leaves on other trees that had been deliciously green were yellow and orange, unbelievably bright colours even in the fading light. My favourite trees, or nearly my favourites, the silver birches, were as yellow as buttercups and shimmered like gold against the silver of the white trunks. The hedgerows were ablaze with red hips from the dogroses, and black glossy elderberries nodded where the creamy flower heads had been.

‘It is a fine country,’ John said, following my loving eyes as I looked all around me at the familiar but always different trees, and hedgerows, and ground. ‘I do understand that you love it.’

‘You will come to love it too,’ I said certainly. ‘When you live here, when you spend your life here, you will care for it as I do, or nearly as much as I do.’

‘No one could equal your passion, I know,’ he said teasingly. ‘It is not the same for Harry, is it?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I think only my papa cared for it as I do, and even he could bear to be away from it for shooting or for a season in town. I would be happy if I never left the estate again as long as I live.’

‘Perhaps we may take leave of absence once a year,’ said John, laughing at me. ‘And when it is a leap year we might go to Chichester!’

‘And for our tenth anniversary treat I shall let you go to Petworth!’ I said, not to be outdone.

‘We are agreed then,’ he said, smiling at me. ‘And I am well content with the bargain.’

I smiled in return and then we rounded the drive and drew up outside the steps where the candles stood in the parlour windows to light our way home.

The announcement that John made after dinner, when the servants had withdrawn and the fruit and cheese were laid out, was greeted with as little surprise as we could wish. And as much joy. My mama’s face was tender with tears and smiles as she held out both hands to John and said, ‘My dearest boy, my dearest boy.’

He took both hands and kissed them, and then hugged her to him and kissed her soundly on both cheeks.

‘Mama!’ he said outrageously, and earned himself a tap from her fan.

‘Impertinent boy,’ she said lovingly, then she held her arms wide to me and I moved close to her for the first sincere, warmhearted hug I think we had ever exchanged.

‘Are you happy, Beatrice?’ she asked under the hubbub Harry was making with the bell, ringing for champagne, and slapping John on the back.

‘Yes, Mama,’ I said truthfully. ‘I really am.’

‘And at some sort of peace at last?’ Her eyes scanned my face, trying to understand the puzzle that was her daughter.

‘Yes, Mama,’ I said. ‘I feel as if something I have waited for has finally come to me.’

She nodded then, satisfied. She had seen the key to all sorts of puzzles in the dim awareness of her mind. The smell of milk on me when Celia and the baby and I returned from France, my nightmares after my father’s death, the disappearance of my childhood playmate, the gamekeeper. She had never dared to grasp the thread and let it lead her through the maze to the monstrous truth. So now she was well pleased to have thread, maze, monster and all safely buried as if they had never been.

‘He is a good man,’ she said, looking at John who had one arm around Celia’s waist, and was laughing with Harry.

‘I think so, indeed,’ I said, following her gaze. John, ever watchful of me, caught my look upon him and released Celia with exaggerated suddenness.

‘I must remember I am an affianced man!’ he said, teasing. ‘Celia, you must forgive me. I forgot my new state.’

‘But when will you be a married man?’ she asked gently. ‘Beatrice, do you plan a long engagement?’

‘Indeed not,’ I said without reflection. Then I paused and looked at John. ‘We have not discussed it, but I should certainly like to be married before Christmas and before lambing.’

‘Oh, well, if the sheep are to be the arbiters of my married life I suppose it should be whenever is convenient to them,’ John said, ironically.

‘You will call the banns and have a full Wideacre wedding,’ begged Mama, visualizing the dress and the attendants and the party and the feasting on the estate.

‘No,’ I said firmly and with an assured glance at John. ‘No, however it is done it should be quiet. I could not stand a fullblown affair. I should like it to be quiet and simple and soon.’

John nodded, a silent gesture of absolute agreement.

‘It should be as you wish, of course,’ said Celia diplomatically, glancing from Mama to me. ‘But perhaps a very small party, Beatrice? With just a few of your family, and John’s and your best friends.’

‘No,’ I said inexorably. ‘I know the fashion is changing but I stick to the old ways. I should like to wake up in the morning, put on a pretty gown, drive to church, marry John, come home for breakfast, and be out in the afternoon checking fences. I do not want one of these fashionable fusses made over what should be a private affair.’

‘And neither do I,’ said John, coming to my support when I needed it.

‘They’re right,’ said Harry with traditional loyalty. ‘Mama, Celia, you need say no more. Beatrice is famous for her love of the old ways; it would be an absolute blasphemy for her to have a modern wedding. Let it be as Beatrice says — a quiet, private affair — and we can have our party at Christmas as a joint celebration.’

‘Very well then,’ said Mama. ‘It shall be as you wish. I should have enjoyed a party, but as Harry says we can make it a special Wideacre Christmas instead.’

She earned a smile from me for that compromise. And her son-in-law-to-be kissed her hands with an elegant air.

‘Now,’ said Celia, turning to the most interesting question. ‘We shall have to redecorate the west wing for the two of you. How would you like it done?’

I surrendered then.

‘Any way, any way at all,’ I said, throwing my hands up. ‘Any way you and Mama think is the best. All I specify is that there shall be no pagodas and no dragons.’

‘Stuff,’ said Celia. ‘The Chinese fashion is quite démodé now. For you, Beatrice, I shall create a Turkish palace!’

So, between teasing and good decisions, John and I had our way of a private wedding and his removal, with the minimum of fuss, into a broad fine bedroom adjoining mine, a dressing room leading off it, a study downstairs facing over the kitchen garden for his books and his medicines, and an extra loosebox in the stables for his precious Sea Fern.

But we decided to have a wedding trip: just a few days. John had an aunt living at Pagham and she lent us her house. It was an easy afternoon’s drive — an elegant small manor house with a welcoming wide-open door.

‘There’s no land attached to it,’ said John, noting my raking glance out of the parlour windows. ‘She owns it merely as a house and garden. There is no farm land. So you need not plan your improvements here.’

‘No, it is Harry who is the one for the new methods,’ I said, returning without apology to the table where John sipped his port and I was toying with candied fruit. ‘I was thinking only that if the fields were planted longways instead of in patches as they are, it would make a better run for the plough.’

‘Does that make much difference?’ asked John, an ignorant town dweller, and a Scot.

‘Oh, heavens, yes!’ I said. ‘Hours in the day. The longest, worst part of ploughing is turning the horses. If I had my way we would farm only in strips. Lovely long reaches so the horses could go on and on without stopping. Straight, straight, straight.’

John laughed outright at my bright face.

‘All the way to London, I suppose,’ he said.

‘Ah, no,’ I disclaimed. ‘That is Harry again. It is he who wants lots more land. All I want is the Wideacre estate properly rounded off and enclosed, and properly yielding. Extra land is a pleasure to own, but it is new people to know and new fields to learn. Harry would buy it as if it were yards of homespun. But it is different to me.’

‘How is it?’ he prompted. ‘How is the land different from all other goods, Beatrice?’

I twisted the slender stem of my wine glass and looked down at the tawny liquid in the bowl.

‘I cannot really explain,’ I said slowly. ‘It is like some sort of magic. As if everyone secretly belonged somewhere. As if everyone had a horizon, a view, that perhaps they may never see, but if they did, they would recognize it as if they had waited all their lives for it. They would see it, and they would say, “Here I am at last.” It’s like that for me with Wideacre,’ I said, conscious that I felt far more than I could say. ‘As soon as I fully saw it — one day, years ago, when my papa took me up on his horse and showed me the land — in that second I recognized my home. For Harry it would be any land, anywhere. But for me it is Wideacre, Wideacre, Wideacre. The only place in the world where I can put my head to the earth and hear a heart beating.’

I fell silent. I had said more than I had meant to. I felt at once foolish, and perilously exposed. My fingers still twirled the glass and I kept my eyes down on them. Then they were stilled, as John put his pale-skinned hand over them.

‘I will never take you away, Beatrice,’ he said tenderly. ‘I do indeed understand how your life is here. It is a tragedy for you, I think, not to have been born the heir to the land. But I do see how you are indispensable on the estate. I hear on all sides how well you manage it, how you change Harry’s plans so that they work in practice as well as in theory. How you never give charity, but always give help. How the land and the people who work the land benefit over and over again from your passion. And so I pity you.’ My head jerked up in instinctive contradiction, but my protest was stilled by his gentle smile. ‘Because you can never possess your beloved Wideacre. I will never come between you and your control of the land, but I am unable, no one is able, to make the land you love absolutely yours.’

I nodded. A few pieces of the puzzle of my new husband had fallen into place. His understanding of what Wideacre meant to me had prompted his agreement to our living in the west wing. His understanding of my obsession had led him to disregard my first refusal. He knew we could be lovers. He knew we could be married. He knew that one of the greatest things in his favour was that he owned no land, no house of his own where I would have had to go. He knew also, for he was so good, this serious, quizzical, desirable husband of mine, that his smile set my pulse thudding, and when he touched me, I melted.

I had never slept all night with a lover in one bed without fear of morning, and that was good for me. But best was his desire, which drew him to me for more times than I could remember in a hazy night of pleasure and wine and talk and laughter.

‘Ah, Beatrice,’ said John MacAndrew, pulling my head on to his shoulder with tender roughness. ‘It’s a long while I’ve been waiting for you.’

And so we slept.

And in the morning, over the fresh-baked rolls and the strong coffee, he said, ‘Beatrice, I think I may like being married to you.’ I found then that my smile was as warm and spontaneous as his own, and that the warmth on my face was a blush.

So the first days of married life passed as easily, as tenderly, and as full of delight, as the first months, aided by our mutual desire. John had had other lovers (and, God knows, so had I), but together we found something special. A mixture of tenderness and sensuality made our nights sweet. But our days were special because of his quick wits and his utter refusal to cease laughing: at me, with me, because of me. He could set me laughing at the most inappropriate moments: when faced with a rambling complaint from old Tyacke, or when listening to some mad scheme of Harry’s. Then I would glance past Tyacke to see John pulling his forelock to me in burlesque imitation of respect, or see him nodding enthusiastically behind Harry’s back while Harry outlined an insane plan to build massive glass-houses to grow pineapples for London.

At times like that, and they came every sweet cold wintry day, I would feel that we had been married and happy for years, and that the future stretched before us like easy stepping stones across a slow river.

Christmas came round and the tenants were bidden to the traditional party. The biggest houses in the land let the tenants and labourers watch the Quality feasting and dancing, but the Wideacre tradition is that of a manor farm. We set up great trestle tables and benches in the stable yard, and we build a great bonfire and roast whole oxen. After everyone has eaten well, and drunk deep of Wideacre-brewed ale, we push the tables back, throw off the winter wraps and dance in the pale winter sunshine.

This party, the first since Papa’s death, was held under the clear blue sky of a good winter’s day, and we danced all afternoon with sunshine warm on our cheeks. As the bride, it fell to me to lead the set and with a half-apologetic smile at John I claimed Harry’s hand for the dance. Behind us the set formed, mimicking our handclasp. Behind us, as well, formed the traditions I had meant to set: that the Squire and his beautiful sister always led the Christmas dance in the stable yard. The next couple was Celia, looking breathtakingly pretty in royal blue velvet trimmed with white swan’s down, and my darling John, ready with a gentle word for Celia and a private smile for my eyes alone.

They started the music. Nothing special: a fiddle and a bass viol, but it was a fast merry tune and my crimson skirts swirled and swayed as I twirled one way, then another, and then clasped Harry’s two firm hands and romped down the avenue of faces. Harry and I stood at the bottom making an archway with our arms and the rest of the set danced through. Then we became part of the smiling, clapping corridor for Celia and John.

‘Are you happy, Beatrice? You look it,’ called Harry to me, watching my smiling face.

‘Yes, Harry, I am,’ I said emphatically. ‘Wideacre is doing well, and we are both well married. Mama is content. I have nothing left to wish for.’

When Harry’s smile widened, his face, increasingly plump from the offerings of Celia’s cook, became even more complacent.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘How well everything has turned out for us all.’

I smiled, but did not reply. I knew he was reminding me of my early opposition to the idea of marriage with John. Harry had never understood why my utter refusal had turned into smiling consent. But I knew he was also thinking of my promise and threat that I would be on Wideacre, at his side, for ever. Harry both dreaded and longed for time alone with me in the locked room at the top of the west-wing stairs. However loving he found Celia, however full his life, he would always long for that secret perverse pleasure waiting for him beyond the light of the chandeliers, beyond the usual halls and corridors of the house. Since my marriage I had met Harry in secret there perhaps two or three times. John accepted easily my excuse of late work, and he himself sometimes stayed overnight with patients if he anticipated a painful birth or a difficult death. During those times, while he waited and watched with the birthing and the dying, I strapped my brother to the wall and ill-treated him in every way I could imagine.

‘Yes, it is good,’ I agreed.

It was our turn to gallop down the set. We had risen to the head again while we were talking, and again we clasped hands and danced down the line. As we reached the end the musicians rippled a chord signifying the end of that dance and Harry spun me round and around so that my crimson brocade skirts flew out in a blaze of colour. I was unlucky — the dizziness tipped me from elation to nausea, and I broke from him white-faced.

John was at my side in an instant. Celia, attentive, beside him.

‘It is nothing, nothing,’ I gasped. ‘I should like a glass of water.’

John snapped his fingers peremptorily to a footman and the icy water in a green wine glass washed down the taste of rising bile, and I cooled my forehead on the glass. I managed a cheeky smile at John.

‘Another miracle cure for the brilliant young doctor,’ I said.

‘It’s as well I have the cure, since I think I provided the cause,’ he said in a low warm voice. ‘There’s been enough dancing for you for one day. Come and sit with me in the dining room. You can see everything there, but you may dance no more.’

I nodded, and took his arm into the house, leaving Celia and Harry to head the next set. John said not a word until we were seated by the window that overlooked the yard, with a pot of good strong coffee beside us.

‘Now, my pretty tease,’ he said, handing me a cup just as I liked it, without milk and with lots of brown treacly sugar. ‘When are you going to condescend to break the good news to your husband?’

‘What can you mean?’ I asked, widening my eyes at him in mock naivety.

‘It won’t do, Beatrice,’ he said. ‘You forget you are talking to a brilliant diagnostician. I have seen you refuse breakfast morning after morning. I have seen your breasts swelling and growing firm. Don’t you think that it’s about time you yourself told me what your body has already said?’

I shrugged negligently, but beamed at him over my cup.

‘You’re the expert,’ I said. ‘You tell me.’

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I think it well we married speedily! I anticipate a son. I think he will arrive at the end of June.’

I bowed my head to hide the relief in my eyes that he had no doubt that I had conceived on that one occasion before our marriage, and no idea that the child was due in May. Then I looked up to smile at him. He was not Ralph. Nor was he the Squire. But he was very, very dear to me.

‘You are happy?’ I asked. He moved from his chair to kneel beside mine and slide his arms around my waist. His face nuzzled into my warm perfumed neck and into the fullness of my breasts — pushed up by the unbearably tight lacing of my stays.

‘Very happy,’ he said. ‘Another MacAndrew for the MacAndrew Line.’

‘A boy for Wideacre,’ I corrected him gently.

‘Money and land then,’ he said. ‘That’s a strong combination. And beauty and brains as well. What a paragon he will be!’

‘And a month early for the conventions!’ I said carelessly.

‘I believe in the old ways,’ said John easily. ‘You only ever buy a cow in calf.’

I had worried about telling him, but no shadow ever came into his mind, not in that first tender moment, nor at any later time. When he discovered how tight I was laced and insisted that I came out of my stays, he merely teased me for my size — he never dreamed that I was five weeks further on in my pregnancy than our lovemaking before the fire would have allowed. All through the icy cold winter when my body was burning at night and so firmly rounded, he merely enjoyed my happiness, and my confident, daring sensuality without question.

No one questioned me. Not even Celia. I announced that the baby would be born in June, and we booked the midwife as if she would be needed then. Even when the long icy winter turned green I remembered to hide my rising fatigue and pretend I was blooming with mid-pregnancy health. And a few weeks after the first secret movement I clapped my hand to my belly to say, in an awed whisper, ‘John, he moved.’

I was aided in the deception by John’s own ignorance. He might have been qualified at the first university in the country, but there were no women of Quality who would allow a young gentleman near them at such a time. Those who preferred a male accoucheur would choose an old, experienced man, not the dashing young Dr MacAndrew. But the majority of ladies and women of the middling sort held to the old ways and used the midwives of the district.

So the only pregnancies John had supervised were those of the poorer tenant farmers and working women, and those only by chance. They would not call him in, fearing the cost of professional fees, but if he was in a Quality house visiting a sick child, the Lady of the house might mention that one of the labourers’ wives was having a difficult birth, or that one of the parlourmaids was pregnant. So John saw births only where there were grave dangers, and only those of poor women. And while he looked at me with his tender sandy-lashed gaze I was able to lie, with all my experience, with all my skill, and with a silly hope of keeping our happiness safe: to keep things as tender and as loving as they were.

Love him I did, and if I wanted to keep his love he would have to be out of the way when the child he thought was his was born, supposedly five weeks premature.

‘I should so like to see your papa here again,’ I said conversationally one evening, while the four of us were seated around the fire in the parlour. Although the blossom glowed in the trees and the hawthorn was white in the hedges, it was still cold after sunset.

‘He might come for a visit,’ said John dubiously. ‘But it’s the devil’s own job detaching him from his business. I nearly had to go and drag him away by the coat-tails in time for the wedding.’

‘He would surely like to see his first grandchild,’ said Celia helpfully. She leaned towards the ever-open workbox, which stood between us, and selected a thread. The altar cloth was half completed and I was employed in stitching in some blue sky behind an angel. A task not even I could spoil, especially since I made one stitch and laid down the work every time I wanted to think or speak.

‘Aye, he’s a family man. He would fancy himself the head of a clan,’ John said agreeably. ‘But I would have to kidnap him to get him away from the business during the busiest time of year.’

‘Well, why don’t you?’ I said, as if the idea had, that second, struck me. ‘Why do you not go and fetch him? You said yourself you were missing the sweet smells of Edinburgh — Auld Reekie! Why not go and fetch him? He can be here for the birth and stand sponsor at the christening.’

‘Aye.’ John looked uncertain. ‘I would like to see him, and some colleagues at the university. But I would rather not leave you thus, Beatrice. And I would rather make a visit later when we could all go.’

I threw up my hands in laughing horror.

‘Oh, no!’ I said. ‘I have travelled with a newborn child already. I shall never forgive Celia for that trip with Julia. Never again will I travel with a puking baby. Your son and I shall stay put until he is weaned. So if you want to visit Edinburgh inside two years, it had better be now!’

Celia laughed outright at the memory.

‘Beatrice is quite right, John,’ she said. ‘You can have no idea how dreadful it is travelling with a baby. Everything seems to go wrong, and there is no soothing them. If you want your papa to see the baby it will have to be him who comes here.’

‘You’re probably right,’ said John uncertainly. ‘But I would rather not leave you during your pregnancy, Beatrice. If anything went wrong I would be so far away.’

‘Ah, don’t worry,’ said Harry comfortingly from the deep winged chair by the fireplace. ‘I will guarantee to keep her off Sea Fern and Celia can promise to keep her off sweetmeats. She will be safe enough here, and we can always send for you if there is any trouble.’

‘I should like to go,’ he confessed. ‘But only if you are sure, Beatrice?’ I poked my needle in an embroidered angel’s face to free my hand to hold it out to him.

‘I am sure,’ I said, as he kissed it tenderly. ‘I promise to ride no wild horses, nor get fat, until you return.’

‘And you will send for me if you feel in the least unwell, or even just worried?’ he asked.

‘I promise,’ I said easily. He turned my hand palm up, in the pretty gesture he had used in our courtship, and pressed a kiss into it, and closed my fingers over the kiss. I turned my face to him and smiled with all my heart in my eyes.

John stayed only for my nineteenth birthday on the fourth of May when Celia had the dining room cleared of furniture and invited half-a-dozen neighbours in for a supper dance to celebrate. More tired than I cared to show, I danced two gavottes with John and a slow waltz with Harry before sitting down to open my presents.

Harry and Celia gave me a pair of diamond ear-drops, Mama a diamond necklace to match. John’s present was a large heavy leather box, as big as a jewel case with brass corners and a lock.

‘A mineful of diamonds,’ I guessed, and John laughed.

‘Better than that,’ he said.

He took a little brass key from his waistcoat pocket and handed it to me. It fitted the lock and the lid opened easily. The box was lined with blue velvet, and nestling securely in its bed was a brass sextant.

‘Good heavens,’ said Mama. ‘What on earth is it?’

I beamed at John. ‘It is a sextant, Mama,’ I said. ‘A beautiful piece of work and a wonderful invention. With this I can draw my own maps of the estate. I won’t have to rely any more on the Chichester draughtsmen.’ I held out my hand to John. ‘Thank you, thank you, my love.’

‘What a present for a young wife!’ said Celia wonderingly. ‘Beatrice, you are well suited. John is as odd as you!’

John chuckled disarmingly. ‘Oh, she’s so spoiled I have to buy her the strangest things,’ he said. ‘She’s dripping with jewels and silks. Look at this pile of gins!’

The little table in the corner of the dining room was heaped with brightly wrapped presents from the tenants, workers and servants. Posies of flowers from the village children were all around the room.

‘You’re very well loved,’ said John, smiling down at me.

‘She is indeed,’ said Harry. ‘I never get such a wealth of treats on my birthday. When she’s twenty-one I shall have to declare a day’s holiday.’

‘Oh, a week at least!’ I said, smiling at the hint of jealousy in Harry’s voice. Harry’s summer as the pet of the estate had come and gone too quickly for him. They had taken him to their hearts that first good harvest, but when he had come home from France they had found that the Squire without his sister was only half a Master, and a silly, irresponsible half at that.

My return from France had been a return into pride of place and the presents and the deep curtsies, bows, and loving smiles were the tribute I received.

I crossed to the table and started opening the gifts. They were small, home-made tokens. A knitted pin cushion with my name made out of china-headed pins. A riding whip with my name carved on the handle. A pair of knitted mittens to wear under my riding gloves. A scarf woven from lamb’s wool. And then a tiny package, no bigger than my fist, wrapped, oddly, in black paper. There was no message, no sign of the sender. I turned it over in my hands with an uneasy sense of disquiet. My baby stirred in my belly as if he felt some danger.

‘Open it,’ prompted Celia. ‘Perhaps it says inside who has sent it to you.’

I tore the black paper at the black seal, and out of the wrapping tumbled a little china brown owl.

‘How sweet,’ said Celia readily. I knew I was staring at it in utter horror and tried to smile, but I could feel my lips trembling.

‘What is the matter, Beatrice?’ asked John. His voice seemed to come from a long way off; when I looked at him I could hardly see his face. I blinked and shook my head to clear the fog and the buzzing sound in my ears.

‘Nothing,’ I said, my voice low. ‘Nothing. Excuse me one minute.’ Without a word of explanation I turned from the pile of unopened gifts, and left my birthday party. In the hall, I rang the bell for Stride. He came from the kitchen doors smiling.

‘Yes, Miss Beatrice?’ he said.

I showed him the black wrapping paper balled in my hand, I had the little china owl tight in the other hand. I could feel the coldness of the porcelain and it seemed to make me shiver all over.

‘One of my presents was wrapped in this paper,’ I said abruptly. ‘Do you know when it was delivered? How it came here?’

Stride took the crumpled paper from me and smoothed it out.

‘Was it a very little package?’ he asked.

I nodded. My throat was too dry to trust my voice.

‘We thought it must have been one of the village children,’ he said with a smile. ‘It was left under your bedroom window, Miss Beatrice, in a little withy basket.’

I gave a deep shuddering sigh.

‘I want to see the basket,’ I said. Stride nodded, and went back through the green baize door. The coldness of the little owl seemed to chill me through and through. I knew well enough who had sent it. The crippled outlaw who was all that was left of the lad who had given me a baby owl with such love four years ago. Ralph had sent me this ominous birthday gift as a signal. But I did not know what it meant. The dining room door opened, and John came out exclaiming at my white face.

‘You are overtired,’ he said. ‘What has upset you?’

‘Nothing,’ I said again, framing the word with numb lips.

‘Come and sit down,’ he said, drawing me into the parlour. ‘You can go back to the dancing in a minute. Would you like some smelling-salts?’

‘Yes,’ I said, to be rid of him for a moment. ‘They are in my bedroom.’

He scanned my face, and then left the room. I sat cold and still and waited for Stride to bring me the little withy basket.

He put it in my hands and I nodded him from the room. It was Ralph’s work, a tiny replica of the other basket I had pulled up to my window seat in the dawn light on my fifteenth birthday. The reeds were fresh and green, so it had been made in the last few days. Wideacre reeds perhaps, so he could be as close to the house as the Fenny. With his basket in one hand, and his horrid little present in the other, I gave a moan of terror. Then I bit the tip of my tongue and pinched my cheeks with hard fingers to fetch some colour to them, and when John came back into the room with my smelling-salts I had a hard laugh ready, and I waved them away. Smelling-salts, questions, grave looks of concern, I dismissed airily. John watched me, his eyes sharp and anxious, but he pressed no questions on me.

‘It is nothing,’ I said. ‘Nothing, I just danced too much for your little son.’ And I would say no more.

I dared not give him reason to stay. With my baby due in three or four weeks, I had to have him away. So I hid my fear under a bright brave front, and I packed his bags for him with a light step and an easy smile. Then I stood on the steps and waved his chaise out of sight, and I did not let myself tremble for fear until I had heard the hoofbeats of the horses cantering away down the drive.

Then, and then only, I leaned back on the sun-warmed doorpost and moaned in fright at the thought of Ralph daring enough to ride or, even more hideous, to crawl right up to the walls of the Hall, and hating enough to remember what he had given me for a present four years before.

But there was no time for me to think, and I blessed the work and the planning that I had to do, and my tiredness during the days and my heavy sleep at nights. In my first pregnancy I had revelled in slothful inactivity in the last few weeks, but in this one I had to pretend to three pairs of watchful eyes that I was two months away from my time. So I walked with a light step and worked a full day, and never put my hands to my aching back and sighed until my bedroom door was safely shut and I could confess myself bone-tired.

I had expected the birth at the end of May, but the last day of the month came and went. I was so glad to wake to the first of June. It sounded, somehow, so much better. I recounted the weeks on my fingers as I sat at my desk with the warm sun on my shoulders and wondered if I should be so lucky as to have a late baby who hung on to make my reputation yet more secure. But even as I reached for the calendar a pain gripped me in the belly, so intense that the room went hazy and I heard my voice moan.

It held me paralysed for long minutes until it passed and then I felt the warm wetness of the waters breaking as the baby started bis short perilous journey.

I left my desk and tugged one of the heavy chairs over to the tall bookcase where I keep the record books that date back to the Laceys’ first seizure of the land seven hundred years ago. I had rather feared that it would hurt me to climb on to the seat and to stretch up to the top shelf. And I was right. I gasped with the pain of stretching and tugging at the heavy volumes. But the scene had to be set, and it had to be persuasive. So I pulled down three or four massive old books and dropped them picturesquely around the chair on the floor. Then I turned the chair over with a resounding crash and lay down on the floor beside it.

My maid, tidying my bedroom above, heard the noise of the falling chair and tapped on the door and came in. I lay as still as the dead and heard her gasp of fright as she took in the scene: the overturned chair, the scatter of books and the widening stain on my light silk skirt. Then she bounded from the room and shrieked for help. The household exploded into panic and I was carried carefully and tenderly to my bedroom where I regained consciousness with a soft moan.

‘Don’t be afraid,’ said Mama, taking my cold hand. ‘There is nothing to fear, darling. You had a fall from a chair in your study and it has made the baby come early. But we have sent for the midwife and Harry will send post to John.’ She leaned over the bed and stroked my forehead with a handkerchief that smelled of violets. ‘It is too soon, my darling,’ she said gently. ‘You must prepare yourself for a disappointment this time. But there will be other times.’

I managed a wan smile.

‘I am in God’s hands, Mama,’ I said, blaspheming easily. ‘Does it hurt very much?’

‘Ah, no,’ she said tenderly. ‘It will not hurt you, my brave girl. You have always been so full of courage and so dauntless when you faced pain or fear. And besides, it will only be a small baby for it is early.’

I closed my eyes as the familiar grip of the pain closed on me.

‘Mama, could I have some lemonade like you used to make when we were ill?’ I asked, as soon as it had passed.

‘Of course, my darling,’ she said, and bent to kiss me. ‘I’ll go at once and make some. But if you need me you can ring, and Celia will stay with you. Mrs Merry, the midwife, is on the way, and a groom is riding for Mr Smythe, the Petworth accoucheur, so you will be well attended, my darling. Rest now, as much as you can. It all takes a long, long time.’

I lay back and smiled. It would not take a long, long time, and Mr Smythe had better stir himself or he would miss his fee. Second babies always come more quickly, I knew, and I could feel the pains growing ever more intense and with less time to rest between them. Celia sat beside my bed and held my hand as she had done once before.

‘It is like waiting for Julia,’ she said, and I noticed her eyes were filled with tears. She was deeply moved at the prospect of birth, this pretty, barren woman. ‘You did so well then, dearest, I know you will manage wonderfully now.’

I gave her an absent-minded smile, but it seemed already as if she were far, far away. I could think of nothing but the struggle going on inside me between the child battling to be free, and my tense body refusing to yield easily. A sudden rush of pain made me groan, and I heard a clatter as a housemaid dropped her end of the family cradle outside the door. Every single servant in the house was dashing around to get a nursery ready for the new unexpected baby: the first of this generation to be born at Wideacre into the Wideacre cradle.

The pains came faster, except they had ceased to be pain and were more like a great strain of heaving a chest of drawers upstairs or pulling on a rope. Mrs Merry was in the room but I scarce heeded her as she bustled around tidying, and tying a twisted sheet from one bedpost to another. My only response was to snap at her when she urged me to pull on it. I wanted none of that lunging, shrieking women’s toil when inside me was a secret, private progress, which was my son edging his way through my reluctant tunnels. She took no offence, Mrs Merry. Her wise old wrinkled face smiled at me and her shrewd eyes took in my curved back and the cooing, moaning sounds I was unconsciously making, and the rocking of my body.

‘You’ll do,’ she said, as I would speak to a brood mare. And as calmly as I could wish she unpacked some darning and sat at the foot of the bed until I needed her aid.

It did not take long.

‘Mrs Merry!’ I said urgently. Celia flew to hold my hand, but my eyes sought the knowing smile of the wise woman.

‘Ready now?’ she asked, rolling her dirty sleeves up.

‘It is … it is …’ I gasped like a floundering salmon as the power of birth once again grabbed my rigid heaving belly like an osprey and shook me in its talons.

‘Push!’ yelled Mrs Merry. ‘I can see the head.’

A spasm overwhelmed me, and then I paused. Another great thrust and I could feel Mrs Merry’s skilled, grimy ringers poking around, gripping the baby, and helping it to force its way out. Then another shove of muscle and flesh came, and the thing was done, and the child was free. A thin burbly wail filled the room and from behind the closed door I heard a ripple of exclamations as every servant who could possibly be in the west wing heard the cry.

‘A boy,’ said Mrs Merry, swinging him by his ankles like a newly plucked chicken and dumping him without ceremony on the quivering mound of my belly. ‘A boy for Wideacre; that’s good.’

Celia’s guileless, suspicionless eyes were on the new baby.

‘How lovely,’ she said, and her voice was full of love and longing, and unshed tears.

I gathered him up into my arms and smelled the sweet strong unforgettable smell of birth on him. In a rush, suddenly, scalding tears were pouring down my cheeks and I was sobbing and sobbing. Weeping for a grief I could name to no one. For his eyes were so very dark blue and his hair so very black. And in my tired and foolish state I thought he was Ralph’s baby. That I had given birth to Ralph’s son. Mrs Merry scooped him out of my arms and bundled him, wrapped in flannel, towards Celia.

‘Out of the room altogether,’ she advised briefly. ‘I’ve a hot posset brewing for her that will have her right as a trivet. It’s good for her to have a weep now — it gets it out early rather than later.’

‘Beatrice crying!’ said Mama with amazement in her voice as she bustled into the room and stopped still at the sight of me face down amid the rumpled sheets.

‘It’s all been too much for her,’ said Celia gently. ‘But look at Baby. What a miracle. Let’s settle him down and come back to Beatrice when she is rested.’

The door closed behind them and I was alone with my sudden inexplicable sorrow, and with sharp-eyed old Mrs Merry.

‘Drink this,’ she said, and I choked on a herbal posset that smelled sweetly of mint, lavender and, probably most fortifying of all, gin. I drained the mug and the tears stopped rolling down.

‘A seven-month-old child, eh?’ she asked, eyeing me, bright with her secret knowledge.

‘Yes,’ I said steadily. ‘Brought on by a fall.’

‘Large baby for seven months,’ she said. ‘Came fast for a first, too.’

‘What’s your price?’ I asked, too weary to fence with her and too wise to try to lie.

‘Nay,’ she said. Her face creased with her smile. ‘You’ve paid me all you need by calling me in. If the bright young doctor’s wife sticks to the old ways then half the ladies of the county will do so too. You’ve given me my living back, Miss Beatrice. They won’t be so quick to call in Mr Smythe when they know I delivered you on my own.’

‘You know I keep to the old ways in everything I can. In conception too,’ I said with a smile and dawning confidence. ‘And what I say on Wideacre is law. There will always be a cottage for you on my land, Mrs Merry, and always a place laid for you in my kitchen. I don’t forget my friends … but I hate gossip.’

‘You’ll hear none from me,’ she said firmly. ‘And there’s none that can swear to the age of a child at birth. Not even that clever young husband of yours could do so. And if he’s not back inside a week or so, I should think there would be no telling — Edinburgh-trained or no!’

I nodded, and leaned back against the pillows while she changed the wet sheets skilfully, without disturbing me, and then turned and patted the pillows behind me.

‘Fetch my son, Mrs Merry,’ I said suddenly. ‘Bring him in to me, I need him.’

She nodded, and went heavily from the room and came back with a bundle of blankets slung carelessly over her shoulder.

‘Your mama and Lady Lacey wanted to see you, but I said not yet,’ she said. ‘Here’s your lad. I’ll leave you alone together to get acquainted, but you lie quietly in bed. I’ll come and fetch him shortly.’

I nodded, but I scarcely heard her. His blue eyes looked into mine unseeing. His face was a crumpled moon with neither shape nor structure. His only clear features were his mass of black, black, hair, and those piercing, near-violet eyes. I threw the covers back and stepped barefoot on to the cold floorboards and walked across to the window with him in my arms. His body was tiny, as light as a doll, fragile as a peony. I flung the window open and sighed as the sweet-scented, flowering, fruiting smells of a Wideacre early June breathed into the room. Before me the rose garden was a mass of dense pink and crimson and white, the heady perfume swelling up the sun-warmed stones of the house to my window. Beyond the garden the paddock gleamed emerald with the lush summer growth, ankle-deep, knee-deep grass. And behind the paddock the grey trunks of the beech trees supported a shifting cloud of melting greenness mixed with the deep, almost violet, splashes of the copper beeches. Above and beyond the tossing heads of the trees were the pale squares of the highest fields on the flanks and shoulders of the downs, and then above them, higher than one can imagine, higher than one remembers, the great head of the downs and the rolling crescent of the green line of horizon that encircles Wideacre.

‘See this?’ I said to the baby, and faced his little lolling head outwards. ‘See this? All this is mine and it will, one day, be yours. Other people may think they own it, but they do not. It is mine, and I endow you with it. And here starts a new battle to make sure that you own it, my son, in full. For you are the heir, you are the son of the Squire, and the son of the Squire’s sister, and so you own it doubly. But more than that: you own it because you will know it and love it as I do. And through you, even after my death, the land will be most truly mine.’

I heard Mrs Merry’s heavy tread in the corridor outside my room and I slammed the window shut and leaped back to bed like a naughty schoolgirl. I paid the price in faintness when I was back on the pillows, but my son, my lovely son, was taken to Mama and Celia and I was left to blissful sleep and dreams of a future that suddenly seemed so much more of a challenge, and yet so much brighter.