The Favoured Child (56 page)

‘Julia!’ Richard cried. His tone was so anguished that I turned
back to look at him. His mouth was working, but his eyes were sharp. ‘You are breaking my heart!’ he exclaimed. ‘I have loved you all my life. I have refused invitations to balls and dinners in Oxford because I considered myself a betrothed man. Now you tell me this means nothing to you! Have you forgotten how much we loved each other in childhood, before all of Acre started to come between us? Before Mr Megson came back, before you started going out of the house instead of waiting at home for me.’

It just did not sound right. I pulled back so that I could scan his face. ‘What is the matter with you?’ I asked softly.

‘Nothing,’ he said quickly. He said it too quickly, I heard it.

‘You do not have to love me,’ I said slowly. I spoke almost sadly. ‘You know that I love you and that I shall love you for always, as my dearest friend, as my brother. No one could take that love away from us. No one could replace you in my heart. There is no need for you to pretend you feel desire for me when you do not.’

There was an invitation there if Richard had been the person to hear it, and understand it. But he was not.

It was odd, for I had believed that it was women who were the romantic ones, who cling to lies and pretty mannered courtesies. I would have given every florist’s bloom in the world to have known what was in Richard’s heart on that bright day on the top of the downs. But he would not tell me.

‘I know I do not have to love you,’ he said gently. ‘But I can tell you, I can tell you freely, that I do love you with all my heart and soul.’

He bent his dark head and kissed me again, and I felt such pity for him if he was telling the truth and such confusion about what I should do to help him that I let him kiss me. His breathing was coming faster and he was murmuring my name over and over as his lips went up and down the line of my neck from my collarbone to my ear.

I wrenched my face away from him, and I put both my hands against his shoulders and tried to push him off me. Then I saw his face, quite empty of emotion, not warm and loving nor hot
with passion, but with an absolute coldness behind his eyes as he looked at me and measured me.

‘Is it the truth that you no longer want me?’ he asked. His voice was like ice.

I pulled my stock up around my throat and smoothed my jacket down. My hat had come off altogether and I pinned it back on as best I could. I felt rumpled and foolish. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I am sorry. I am betrothed to another man and I love him as a lover. I love you as a brother and that is all.’

‘Then you are faithless and you have broken my heart!’ he cried out and spun around to Prince and vaulted up into the saddle.

‘Richard!’ I said. But he wheeled Prince around so close that the flick of his tail stung me in the face. Richard, high on his back, was scowling. He jerked Prince to face back along the way we had come and then dug his heels in hard and used his whip too. Prince threw up his head and thundered away from us. Misty sidled, anxious, and I grabbed her reins.

I did not hurry to follow. I let him go. I waited on the downs and I wept for the pain I had caused him, and that I should have been so stupid as to think that Richard could readily accept another in his place. I had never known before how much he loved me. I wept for my folly, and for the loss of that love.

I led Misty over to a hummock which I could use as a mounting-block to help me into the high saddle, and I wiped my eyes on the back of my glove and sniffed miserably. Then I turned her head for home and went slowly down the bridle-track to the foot of the downs. And there he was.

He was waiting for me, with Prince held on a short rein, standing very still at the side of the path. He was waiting for me with his sweetest smile.

‘Julia, I beg your pardon,’ he said handsomely, and put his hand out to shake mine.

I was swept with a flood of relief that we were no longer quarrelling. ‘Oh! Richard!’ I said, lost for words.

‘To tell the truth, I am jealous,’ he said frankly, ‘but I make a
very poor Othello. All this time I thought of you as a little girl, and you have been growing into a strong and beautiful woman. I only hope your James is worthy of you! But I promise you I will dance at your wedding with a glad pair of heels. And I promise you that you will never hear me reproach you again!’

I dropped Misty’s reins and held Richard’s hand in both of mine. Oh, Richard,’ I said, ‘I do thank you. I am sure I have been thoughtless and selfish in not explaining earlier to you what was happening. It was all so sudden…’

‘Tell me!’ he said invitingly, and we turned our horses downhill at an easy pace. I rode with the companion of my childhood and the best friend of my girlhood and told him about falling in love, and how good a man I had chosen. Richard smiled and asked me about the family and our days in Bath; he pledged himself to love them all for me.

Misty jinked at a rag fluttering in the hedgerow as we slid downhill on the wet mud.

‘She’s fresh,’ I said, gentling her. ‘She missed her gallop on the downs.’

‘Oh, let’s forget the downs!’ Richard said. ‘I behaved like a fool, and like a surly ill-natured fool at that. Let’s take them home by the common and have a good gallop.’

‘Oh, yes!’ I said and we turned to our right at the village lane and trotted around the back of the village, past the squatters, up to the crest of the common where the fire-break had been cut back. It made a grand track of white soft sand, as broad as a river. Sea Mist’s ears went forward.

‘A race?’ I called to Richard. I could tell he was confident on Prince. Richard nodded. We reined in the horses and they sidled and blew out, knowing what was coming.

‘One, two, three, go!’ I yelled, the wind whipping my words from me as the horses leaped forward.

Prince was away first, but Sea Mist drew level and I was beside Richard. We glanced sideways at each other through the flurry of wind and the tossing manes and the sand thrown up. There was a thundering noise of hooves and Prince pulled ahead,
and my face was showered in sand and grit as he came past. Sea Mist liked it no more than I, and she instinctively slowed as we chased Prince and Richard round a slight curve and then up a steep hill. The gradient told on the older horse and Prince’s gallop became a canter and then was more and more laboured, while Sea Mist took the deep shifting sand and the steepness of the hill in her stride. We passed Richard at a canter. I was leaning forward and clinging like a louse to Misty’s mane. Then I pulled her up on the pinnacle of the hill and waited for Richard and Prince to come alongside.

Richard’s blue eyes were blazing with pleasure, his face spotted with mud. ‘That was grand!’ he said. ‘I would have won but for the hill.’

‘He’s a lovely old horse,’ I said, leaning over to pat Prince on his sweat-streaked neck. ‘He must have been a fine hunter when he was young.’

‘You ride so well,’ Richard said generously. ‘It must be true, what they say, that you are a natural rider.’

‘It’s in our blood,’ I said. ‘We’re both of Lacey stock.’

Richard smiled at that. ‘You and me,’ he said with quiet satisfaction, ‘you and me.’

‘I’ve got sand in my eyes,’ I said, blinking and rubbing them with the back of my glove. ‘Is my face all muddy?’

‘Yes,’ said Richard with brotherly unconcern, ‘and your hair is all falling down.’

‘Hold my reins,’ I said and handed them to him and pulled my gloves off and felt at the back of my head for hairpins. I pinned up the stray curls and took my reins back from Richard, and we sat in silence, resting the horses and getting our own breath back.

Below us were the growing walls of the new Wideacre Hall, to the left was the little golden box of the Dower House. Further along the valley again was Acre village, although we could only see the church spire and glimpse some of the cottages hidden by the trees of the parkland. Straggling out from the village, along the edge of the common, were the squatters’ huts, half roofed
with moss and bracken, little wooden shelters built by people who lived on the very edge of society, always near starvation and always in danger of losing what little rights they had over grazing and cutting turf and firewood, always ill, always accused of thievery or poaching.

In the bad years on Acre the estate had become known as land where there was no squire. New people had come to squat on a corner of the common land and now there was almost a little village – a little community beside Acre – scattered along the margin of the common.

Beyond them again was a neat circle of painted carts and tents, picturesque at this distance, where the gypsies had come for the autumn and winter. They came every year, trusting to a tradition which said Wideacre once belonged to gypsies, back in the earliest years. No one could prove it or deny it, and whether it was true or not hardly mattered. They affected to believe it, and no one would challenge a gypsy man, who would fight to the death over a matter of pride, or a gypsy woman, who could cast a spell on you if she wished.

They claimed they had been camping here, in a little circle of carts and tents, three families living as one, since the time of the Romans. At any rate, Wideacre accepted them as another element in a natural order which sent foot-rot to the sheep in winter and flukes in summer. In the old days the women in Acre would complain that they lost washing off the line, and when there had been vegetable patches, a few turnips or sweet carrots would disappear from the plots. But no one could stop them coming or going as they wished.

Every winter they made their camp in the same place, in the same small circle with a fire in the middle. People said that if they came early, it was a sure sign of a hard winter, that they could tell the seasons as well as the bushes in the hedgerows or the animals. This winter they had come late, and for reasons of their own they had stayed on.

We turned the horses and headed for a track which ran alongside a little woodland. We rode in silence, in quiet companionship.
The horses made little noise, their hooves muffled by the sandy soil which was still soggy from the rain. Then Sea Mist threw up her head as a rabbit burst from the wood and scuttered across the path ahead of us. There was a stream of ringing bells, and a goshawk shot out of the wood on the rabbit’s tail, its wings open to break its speed as the taloned feet came forward and it dived on to the rabbit’s neck. The rabbit screamed like a child and bucked, but then dropped still – a quick clean kill. The goshawk settled its wings with a satisfied shrug and looked around. It looked straight at us, frozen in surprise, and then its deep marigold-coloured eyes stared back without fear.

‘Is it Ralph Megson’s?’ Richard asked me softly.

I nodded without speaking. The goshawk’s gaze was holding my own. Then there was a rustling in the undergrowth and a black dog came out. Black as mourning velvet, it was, a lurcher, and it shot out of the undergrowth, nose to the ground, until it saw the goshawk and her kill. It dropped then, splendidly trained, into lying position, front paws out, head up, like a couchant lion on a crest.

Then we heard a soft rustle and Ralph came out of the shadow of the trees, one crutch to steady himself tucked under his arm. He nodded at the two of us but said nothing, and we kept silent also. His eyes were on his hawk. He walked towards her without speaking, pulling something out of a little bag he had at his side. It was a strip of meat, and he held it in his gloved hand and flapped it at her temptingly. She glanced from him to the skull of the rabbit, undecided, and then she opened her wings and half hopped, half flew to his proffered fist. She bent her lovely head and pulled at the meat, straining against it as she gripped with her yellow claws.

Ralph pulled a leash from his belt and fastened it to the jesses on her legs and then looped it carefully into his palm. He nodded at the dog and it scooted forward, picked up the rabbit and brought it to him. Ralph tossed it into his bag and patted the dog’s head and gave it a scrap of meat too. Only then did he turn and smile at us, his hawk balancing on his fist, her cream and
grey speckled breast feathers still sleek and smooth with excitement.

‘Good day, Miss Julia, Master Richard,’ he said, smiling at the two of us.

‘Preserving the sabbath and the game at once, Mr Megson!’ I said, delighted to have caught him out.

He smiled his slow warm smile. ‘I’m a godless man indeed,’ he said. ‘But I do have to eat, Miss Lacey!’

‘Good day,’ Richard interrupted stiffly, but then he forgot his dignity. ‘That was a wonderful kill! We saw it! It was right in front of us! I’ve never seen a hawk kill so close before! Right under our noses!’

‘Aye, she’s a beauty,’ said Ralph proudly. ‘Three years I’ve had her, and I’ve yet to see her miss.’

‘What’s the biggest thing she’s ever taken?’ Richard asked.

‘She’s had a couple of hare,’ Ralph said, ‘and she can take a pheasant too. She’ll take grouse without trouble, and duck. A family could eat like royalty on what she’d bring them.’

‘I don’t suppose she’d let anyone else hold her…’ Richard said insinuatingly.

Ralph laughed at him. ‘Yes, you can hold her,’ he said easily. ‘You’ll have to come off your horse, though – she doesn’t like being held on horseback. It’s her only fault, and a great nuisance for me. I can keep up with her on short flights, but I’m very tired by the end of the day, looking for game with her and putting it up.’

Richard was off Prince in a flash, and Ralph put his hand out to hold the reins. He took a spare gauntlet out of the bag and Richard pulled it on.

‘Ever handled a hawk before?’ he asked softly. Richard shook his head. ‘Well, you take her from behind,’ he said. ‘Just rest your hand a little above mine, where you think her ankles would be.’ Richard put his hand out, and the hawk stepped back on to his fist as naturally as she had gone to Ralph.

‘Faithless,’ Ralph said with satisfaction. He handed the leash to Richard and showed him how to loop it into his hand. ‘It feels
right like that, and you can’t drop it by accident,’ he said. ‘You always hold a hawk’s leash like that.’

Richard nodded, his face bright with concentration.