The Favoured Child (74 page)

I glanced at Grandmama for her help, but her face was impassive. My grandpapa stared sombrely at the carpet between his boots. I looked again at Richard. There was only one way out for me. I could tell them that Richard and I were brother and sister and that the marriage must be annulled. But if I spoke of that, then Grandmama would know that I had lain with my own brother and that the little child, my own little child, was the fruit of a perversion. Worse, she would know that I was not her grandchild at all; that I was the daughter of Beatrice, the witch of Wideacre, and her brother Harry, the fool; that I was no kin.

I could not do it. I could not lose mother and grandmother in one day. I could not tell her she must look on me as a stranger stained with sin. I could not find the words.

‘Very well,’ I said dutifully. I somehow got to my feet. Lord Havering ordered the Havering carriage and I drove home in it alone, while Richard rode behind.

Stride opened the door to me and I could see he had been weeping.

Oh, Stride!’ I said sadly.

There was time for no other words. Richard came in and ordered Stride to send Jenny Hodgett to take me to bed with a bowl of soup and a glass of port. When I was undressed and in my bed, Richard himself came up with a glass of hartshorn and water and said he would sit with me until I slept.

I dropped back on the pillows and closed my eyes so that I should not see him in my window-seat, blocking my view of the
late-evening sky and the sighing tree outside the window. My grief for my mama was so strong that I thought it would choke me to hold in the sobs which gathered in great asphyxiating lumps in my throat.

‘Hush, Julia,’ Richard said tenderly. ‘Hush.’

He came to my bedside and stroked my hair back from my forehead as if I were a little child. I tried to pretend it was my mama’s hand, and that none of this nightmare was happening, that I should very soon wake up and find myself safe and beloved again.

Richard spent that night in my room thus. And whether he was there as a brother in mourning, as a husband, or even as a gaoler, I never really knew.

I
n the morning there was business to be done. Richard went down to Acre to tell Ralph Megson what had happened, and to instruct him to announce the deaths in Acre.

While he was out, I went into my mama’s room. It was a hot summer morning and someone had half opened the sash window, but the curtains were drawn. Every room in the house would be in shadow for this week. In sudden impatience with the conventions of grief I pulled the curtains back and the sunlight and the warmth spilled into the room, making the rose and blue pattern on the carpet suddenly bright.

I gazed carefully around the room as if I were trying to print it on to my memory, as though I could keep the people I loved by clinging to their objects. I felt somehow my mama was still here. Her ghost, like the faint light smell of lilies which she always wore, seemed to linger. Her hairbrush had a few fair hairs tangled in the bristles; there was water in the ewer beside the basin; her nightgown was folded up at the foot of the bed.

The room looked as if she had just stepped out for a moment. I could even see the dent in the cushions of her stool at her dressing-table. She must have sat there to pin her bonnet before she left with John.

It was a pretty room. When I was a little girl, its only pleasant feature was the view of the tossing green trees of Wideacre Park, and the familiar clear smell of flowers. But since John had come home, the room had been carpeted and furnished with the light white and gold furniture which Mama loved. A crystal bowl of roses stood in the fireplace, her silver-backed mirror, brush and comb stood on the neat dressing-table, reflected in the winged
mirror above. I peered superstitiously at the mirror. I could not believe that I would not see her face there. I would never see that beloved face again.

I went across the room and looked out of the window. I shut my eyes and pressed my forehead to the cold glass. The summertime smells of Wideacre wafted in around me and stirred the curtains at my side. Everything was warm and green and growing. I could not believe that among all this life my mama lay still and cold.

I would not believe it. I screwed my eyes up tighter and then turned and opened them to look into the room. I was certain that she would be there, sitting on the little stool before the mirror, or nipping a wilted flower from the vase. I willed her to be there with all my strength. I could not believe that she, who had been there so constantly and so reliably for all my childhood, should suddenly and so unexpectedly be gone.

‘Mama!’ I whispered into the silence of the room.

There was no reply.

She had gone indeed, and I was alone.

I left her room with the curtains blowing and the window open. I went downstairs to the parlour. I stumbled against the table in the sudden gloom and I crossed the window and threw back the curtains.

The maid had not been in here to clean and tidy. She had drawn the curtains but left the room as it had been when my lie split our world, and killed my childhood, and broke my mama’s heart. The chair to which I had clung for support was still askew. The seat where John had wearily dropped was still at the fireside. Around my mama’s chair, in a shower of gold, like wedding-day rose petals, were the little flowers she had cut from the front of her gown while she sat with her head down and learned her daughter was a whore.

I dropped on my knees on the hearth rug and started to pick them up, like some lost Ophelia in a travelling theatre. When my hand was full, I held out my silk apron like a country girl and heaped them in it. Every scrap of material I meticulously
gathered, until I had them all. Then I took them, as carefully as new-laid pheasant’s eggs, held in my apron, up the stairs to my room.

I wrapped them in soft white tissue-paper, and I laid them in my top drawer. Even they smelled very faintly of lilies.

I clung to the chest of drawers and wept as though my heart would break.

Their funerals were to be on Saturday, the fourth day after the harvest when I had reaped the Wideacre corn and Lacey ruin in one sunny afternoon. My Grandmama Havering had arranged that there would be an announcement of our private marriage in the newspapers on the following Monday. Richard thought that Ralph should be told before the newspaper announcement, and I agreed.

I agreed in silence with a nod. I felt weary to my very heart with the quiet wordless mourning for my mama. It was doubtless foolish, but I believed that I would never be happy again. Perhaps I was wrong not to seek comfort from my grandmama, or from our vicar, or even from Richard, but I felt that I should never find comfort. No one would ever again mother me, now that my mama was gone.

So, for the first time in many months, I did not think about Wideacre, nor what Acre might be thinking or doing. When Richard told me that he had ordered Ralph to come to the Dower House that evening, I nodded as though I did not much care.

Ralph came in, stepping carefully across the polished hall as if he did not want to wake a sleeping invalid. But though my mama lay in the house, nothing would waken her again. Her coffin was upstairs in the pretty room which smelled of lilies. The lid was nailed down already; I could not even kiss her goodbye on her cold cheek, for they told me she had been too badly injured.

I tried not to think of that.

‘I am sorry, Julia,’ Ralph said. He took my hand in his and smiled down at me; his dark eyes were very gentle.

‘Thank you,’ I said awkwardly.

‘She wouldn’t have been in pain, you know,’ he said softly. ‘I have seen men shot at close range. She would have died at once.’

I flashed a look up at him. ‘You are sure?’ I asked. ‘You are not just saying that to make me feel better?’

Ralph shook his head. ‘Nay,’ he said. ‘I’d not lie to you on such a subject. She would not have had a lot of pain. Nor John.’

Richard interrupted us. ‘Will you come to the library, Mr Megson? You and I have business to discuss.’

Ralph nodded and stepped back for me to precede them into the room.

‘Julia need not trouble herself with this,’ Richard said smoothly. ‘She can sit in the parlour.’

Ralph was suddenly still, as wary as a hare in bracken. ‘Miss Lacey should be present,’ he said. ‘She is joint heir.’

‘Not any longer,’ Richard said. He smiled at Ralph and their eyes locked. ‘I don’t do business in the hall,’ Richard said coolly. ‘Will you come into the library, Mr Megson?’

‘After you, Julia,’ Ralph said firmly. Even in the numb haze I noted that he used my Christian name and I heard his appeal to me to stand firm for Acre.

I glanced at Richard. He gave me a quick frown which should have warned me to stay out of this struggle between him and Ralph. But Ralph was my friend, and Acre was my village. However weary I might be, however ill with mourning, they had a call on me.

‘I’ll come in,’ I said, and walked past Richard into the library and sat at the side of the table. Richard took the seat at the head, where Uncle John had always sat, and Ralph sat opposite me, facing the bookcases. The window behind Richard was open; outside a thrush was singing loudly.

‘We have some news which may surprise you,’ Richard said sweetly. ‘Miss Lacey and I are married. We were married privately some months ago. And Miss Lacey’ – he broke off and smiled—‘I
should
say, Mrs MacAndrew, is expecting our child.’

Ralph gave me a hard look. ‘You are pregnant?’ he said baldly.

I nodded.

‘And married?’ he said.

No one corrected his inversion of Richard’s statement. We all knew that Ralph assumed I had married because I was pregnant, and not even Richard had the gall to brazen it out.

‘Yes,’ I said through sour lips.

Ralph dropped his dark head in his hands for a moment. ‘Oh, Julia!’ he said sorrowfully. ‘I
wish
you had come to me.’

Richard let that indiscretion go. ‘As Julia’s husband, I am now the squire and the sole owner of Wideacre,’ he said. ‘I called you in, Mr Megson, to ask you to convey the news to the village. There will be an announcement in the newspapers on Monday. I think since we are in mourning, that there should be no celebrations in Acre.’

Ralph scowled very darkly. ‘No, indeed,’ he said dourly. ‘There will be no celebrations that you have married Miss Lacey and made yourself the new squire.’

Richard nodded, and let that go too. ‘I shall inherit the MacAndrew fortune, I do not doubt,’ he said, ‘and, of course, I have total control over my wife’s fortune too. I plan no immediate changes, Mr Megson. You may tell them that in Acre. I am satisfied thus far with how the estate is being run.’

‘You’ve not seen the wills,’ Ralph said. ‘It may be that there are guardians set over the two of you.’

‘I’ve not seen them,’ Richard conceded, ‘but I believe that guardianship is invested in either Julia’s mama or my papa. There was no provision for them dying together.’

Ralph did not even look shaken. He looked sullen. ‘I’ll tell the village,’ he said ungraciously. ‘Was there anything else?’

Richard hesitated. ‘The grain,’ he said negligently. ‘I take it you have made arrangements for its sale?’

Ralph shot a swift look at me. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We are reserving a portion of it for sale locally. Another portion goes to Midhurst market, and the remainder of the crop to the London market later in the year.’

‘I think not,’ Richard said. His voice was like silk and his blue eyes were shining. ‘I think we should send the whole crop out of
the county, to the London market. That is where the profits are. Wideacre has to be farmed as a profitable business, you understand, Mr Megson.’

Ralph measured him with a dark level look. ‘Yes, I think I understand,’ he said. ‘I won’t speak of this further tonight. But I am afraid you can do nothing about the wheat. The agreements have already been made.’

Their eyes locked, like a pair of stags in battle. Richard was the master of Wideacre and Ralph was his agent. But Ralph would always be stronger, and it was Richard who looked away. ‘We’ll see,’ he said sulkily. ‘But do as I order, and tell Acre, Mr Megson.’

Of course,’ Ralph said. He waited for a moment, and when Richard said nothing more, he pushed back his chair and went to the door. Richard lounged in the carver chair and watched him go, but I rose and went across the hall with him.

He said nothing.

I had expected a word from him, a word of blame, of disappointment, of condemnation of me as another Lacey woman who had been a fool and had betrayed the land. But I had nothing from him except a hard black look which was somehow full of pity. Then his hand was on the door and he was gone.

He had left. He had left me alone, alone with Richard.

I went slowly back to the library, twisting a fringe on my shawl. Richard had pushed his chair back from the table and tipped it on its back legs, balancing his weight with his booted feet against the table’s edge.

‘Megson all right?’ he demanded.

‘Yes,’ I said. I went to the window. The sun was going down behind the trees, out of sight. It had tinged the sky above the wood into cream and grey and rose. I leaned my aching head against the cool thick glass of the window and stood in silence.

‘I shall ride up to the hall tomorrow and see how the work is going,’ Richard said, ‘and on Monday I shall ask the foreman how quickly it could be completed if we doubled the workers. We shall move in there as soon as possible.’

‘Richard . . .’ I said. I turned towards him so I could see if he
really was as calm and confident as he seemed. ‘Richard, we must talk. You cannot truly think that we can live together at the hall!’

His face was as untroubled as a good child’s. ‘Why not?’ he demanded.

I spread my hands out in a vague gesture and then brought them up to cradle my cheeks. ‘Richard!’ I said. ‘What John told us about our true parents alters everything.’

Richard was blank. ‘Why?’ he asked.

I leaned back against the window. It seemed to me that the world had gone mad all around me and that I had to hold on to my little corner of it or be engulfed.