The Favoured Child

21

Mama was sitting up in bed, drinking her morning chocolate, when I tapped at her door after changing into my riding habit and brushing the hawthorn petals from my hair.

‘Good morning!’ she said as I came in. ‘The Queen of the May herself! Do you have magical powers this morning, my dear? Could you give me eternal youth and beauty, please?’

I laughed. ‘I think you have it already, Mama,’ I said, sitting on the foot of her bed. ‘You have looked quite unfairly pretty ever since Uncle John came home.’

Mama smiled. ‘That is from being happy,’ she said lightly. ‘But how are you? Are you tired after your dawn chorusing?’

I stretched. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Feeling lazy, but not tired, though it is a longer walk than I thought. I always ride up that hill; I’ve never walked it before.’

‘You could have a rest before breakfast,’ Mama offered. ‘Or perhaps you should go back to bed and I will wake you at noon.’

I got up from the bed and went across to her window-seat. ‘Don’t tempt me,’ I said. ‘If the village is merrymaking, it is my job to check the animals. I shall go up to the downs after breakfast and see the sheep, and then down to the Fenny fields to see that the cows are well.’

Mama nodded and threw back the bed covers and slipped out of bed. ‘You put me to shame,’ she said. ‘I had thought we would all take a holiday!’

The garden gate banged.

‘Who is that?’ she asked, pulling on a wrapper and coming over to the window to stand beside me.

‘Jem is just back from the London stage with letters,’ I said, going towards the door. ‘Maybe there’s something from James!’

I sped down the stairs and nearly collided with Jenny Hodgett taking the letters from Jem at the front door. ‘Any for me?’ ‘I asked.

Jenny turned, smiling. ‘Yes, Miss Julia,’ she said. ‘From your young man, by the looks of it.’

I took it. It had James’s familiar sloping writing on the envelope, but it had been franked for him. It had been posted in England.

‘Jenny!’ I exclaimed. ‘This was posted in England. James is home!’

She beamed back at me and I clutched the letter in both hands. ‘I’ll read it in the stables,’ I said, suddenly wanting to be alone and uninterrupted. ‘I’ll be in for breakfast, tell Mama.’ I slipped out of the front door and down the garden path and through the side gate to the stable yard.

Jem had gone back to his room above the tack room and the stables were deserted. Misty was in her loose box where I had put her, still with her saddle and bridle on, her wreath of blossoms on a hook outside her stable. I opened her door and slipped into her stable, and sat down on an upturned bucket. She nuzzled the top of my head gently and I smelled her oaty breath as she sniffed at me. The letter crackled as I slit the envelope and spread it on my knee, leaning towards the half-door of the stable to catch the light.

It was brief.

Dearest heart,

This letter precedes me by no more than six days. I returned to England this afternoon. I shall be with my papa’s lawyers tomorrow, and as soon as I have travelled to Bristol and reported to my papa, I shall pack my bags and be with you the day after that – May 6. If you can squeeze me into your little house, I shall come to dinner and stay the night. Or, if you cannot, I shall sleep in the flower-bed beneath your window; but if I cannot see you at once, I shall go utterly and totally insane.

The contracts for our marriage are finally done – I shall sign the deeds tomorrow. The settlement my papa is to make on us will build us a house even grander than your own Wideacre Hall. I shall bring some plans with me when I come and we can set to work building at once.

As far as I am concerned, we can be married tomorrow, if that suits you? Or perhaps you require longer to prepare a trousseau? I would not wish you to think me impatient. Next week will be soon enough.

My darling, I kiss your hands, your feet, the ground beneath your feet, and the rocks beneath the ground.

In all seriousness, all the business preparation for the marriage is done, and it remains only for you to name the day when you will make me wholly happy…and half squire of Wideacre!

Make it soon.

Yours for ever,

James

I reached a hand up and stroked Misty’s flank without being aware of the warmth of her smooth coat beneath my fingers. James was coming home at last, and there was no hitch, no difficulty. He might joke about being ready to marry tomorrow, but I knew James. If he told me, even in jest, that he was ready to marry, then he was. And, God knew, I was ready to be his wife.

I got to my feet, thinking to go into the house and tell Mama that James was home and to ask Mrs Gough for the best dinner she could devise for the day he was to arrive – but then I paused. I wanted to be somewhere quiet and alone for a little while longer. The happiness I had in this gentle sunlit morning was too much to mislay amid a hustle of menus and gowns and preparations. I tightened Misty’s girth and led her out of the stable to the mounting-block. I folded the letter and tucked it neatly into the little pocket of my riding jacket. Then I rode Misty out of the stable yard and turned her right up the drive towards Wideacre Hall.

I rode carelessly, on a loose rein, dreaming of how it would be when James came to me, whether I could go and wait for him at the Acre corner, and if he would drive himself or come in a post-chaise, whether he would smile to see me patient at the corner, or whether I would look foolish, like a village girl waiting for her swain. I passed all my dresses in rapid review, thinking which would suit me the best and wondering if I had any new gowns he had not seen in Bath which he might like. And I thought about the menu for his dinner, and what were his favourite cuts of meat and what puddings he cared for. I smiled as I rode, at peace in a little golden reverie of joy, because James was coming home.

The builders had taken the May holiday, so the garden and the new hall were deserted. I rode past the terrace towards the rose garden. I wanted to sit in the sunshine and dream a little more before I went home to tell Mama that we must start to prepare for my wedding day. I hitched Misty to the trellis on the old summer-house and went inside. It was sheltered here, warm. The birds were singing in the woods around the garden, and the summer-house smelled pleasantly of dry leaves and crumbling timber. I sat on the floor, careless of my cream riding habit, and leaned my head back against the wooden wall. With James’s open letter in my hand, I closed my eyes and dozed, still smiling, still dreaming of the day when he would be with me.

It seemed, at first, part of that dream – a kiss, as light as a butterfly’s wing, as soft as a feather on my cheek. I smiled and stirred, not opening my eyes. It seemed part of the dream of James, part of that previous dream in the summer-house when I had been a girl, when I had been Beatrice. I felt as tranced, as dreamy as I had then, and I relaxed, as contented as a sleeping child on the dusty floor of the summer-house, and felt my face covered with kisses. The weight of him came on me gently, warm. As feckless as Beatrice herself, I put my arms around his neck and welcomed his touch. He kissed me on the mouth and I opened my lips in pleasure.

The touch of his tongue in my mouth was like ice.

My eyes flew open, I jerked my head away.

It was Richard.

At once I struggled to be up and away from him, but he did not let me up. His weight, which I had welcomed, was suddenly a weapon. He was pinning me down, and I was not able to struggle against him to throw him off.

‘Richard!’ I said in anger. ‘Let me up! Let me up this minute!’

He said nothing in answer, he would not even meet my eyes. Instead he reached down and fumbled with my skirts and petticoats, ignoring my ineffectual pushes against his chest.

I gasped. Richard had pulled my skirt up to my waist. I had a sudden recollection of the goshawk bating away in a frenzy of terror. I struggled to get my left hand free and I slapped his face as hard as I could.

He shook his head like a bullock stung by a horse-fly and grabbed for that hand. His weight pinned my other arm between his body and mine. I wriggled, but I was helpless.

‘Richard!’ I said more loudly, sharply. There was a hard note of panic in my voice. I heard it, and Richard heard it too. He looked at me then for the first time. His eyes were blank, a glazed blue, bright as glass, expressionless. Then he pushed one hard knee between my legs and parted them, bruising the flesh.

I screamed.

I screamed without thinking if there could be anyone in earshot. I screamed out of terror, without thought of managing Richard or of dealing with him. I screamed in the same mindless fright as that of the goshawk who had launched herself blindly into the air, forgetting she was held fast.

At once, as if my scream were a signal, he twisted the wrist he was holding so tightly that the skin burned with pain and, though I opened my mouth to scream again, all I could do was gasp in horror as I heard the slight click of a small bone breaking, and felt my whole arm, my whole body, burn with pain. Richard dropped my hand and put his palm over my mouth instead.

‘If you struggle, I shall break the other wrist,’ he said softly, almost conversationally. ‘If you scream, I will strangle you. I will strangle you until you lose consciousness, Julia, and then I will do what I have to do, and then I may tighten my hands a little more. Do you understand?’

His face was so close to mine. I could feel his breath on my cheek. He was not panting, he was breathing evenly, steadily; he might have been taking a gentle stroll.

‘Richard…’ I said in a frightened whisper, ‘don’t do this, Richard, please. Why are you doing this?’

His smile was darker and his eyes more navy blue than I had ever seen them. ‘You were going to bring in a rival squire,’ he said. His voice was a thread of hatred. ‘You were going to build a bigger house than Wideacre Hall. I read it in his letter. While you slept there, beside my house on my land, you were dreaming of bringing in a rival squire and claiming half of our land.’

I opened my mouth to disagree, my mind scrambling like a trapped animal for some way out.

‘You are my betrothed,’ Richard said. ‘I was a fool to let you leave Wideacre and a fool to try to win you back kindly. Now I am going to claim you for my own.’

His words, and their meaning, sank in.

‘Richard, no!’ I said. I could feel my throat tightening with terror. This nightmare in the summer-house was too like the bullying of our childhood. I could feel myself slipping from courage, from the strong abilities of my womanhood, into the panic-stricken victim that I had really been when we were children.

‘It will hurt,’ he said with unconcealed pleasure. ‘I think you will be afraid, Julia.’

‘No!’ I screamed, but my throat had clamped tight and no cry came out. I croaked silently, and Richard guessed that I was now too afraid to make a sound, and his eyes sparkled in utter delight.

He put one hand down and loosened his breeches and pulled them down. Then, with one hand holding my wrist, the other back over my mouth, forcing my head back on the dusty floor, he reared away from me, and with one hating, savage thrust he pushed into me, and my scream of pain was choked on his hard hand and my sobs retched in the depth of my throat.

It was like a nightmare, like the worst of nightmares, and it did not stop. While my hurting body registered the pain, I tried to find some courage from somewhere to say, ‘Well, it is done.’ But it was not done. Richard pushed into the blood and the hurt flesh again and again and again. He seemed to take delight in paining me so badly that I was screaming for help inside my head and hot tears were spilling down my face.

He gave a great shudder at the pinnacle of the very worst of it and then he collapsed and dropped his weight upon me as if I were nothing more to him than a bale of straw.

I lay spreadeagled on the dusty floor, where once I had dreamed of passion, with the tears pouring down my cheeks in a morass of pain and misery. I could feel I was bleeding, I could feel a bruise forming on my thigh where he had knelt upon me; but I could not comprehend the pain inside me.

He rolled off me and then was suddenly alert, looking out of the open doorway. He jumped to his feet, without a word to me, and, hitching his breeches, ran down the steps into the rose garden as if all the fiends of hell were after him. He ran from me as if he had murdered me indeed and he was leaving a sprawled body. I lay still, as he had left me, and I stared at the white roof and at the little hole in the timbers where the blue sky showed through, and I felt a little trickle of blood between my legs.

My belly seemed to have gone into some sort of regular spasms of pain, for every now and then it eased, but then there was a great wave which came over me and made me gasp and bite the back of my uninjured hand so as not to cry out. My broken wrist was throbbing, and I could see it was bruised black and swelling.

I lay on the dusty floor with my pretty cream riding habit pulled up to my waist and my hair tumbled down and spread in the dust, and I knew myself to be so broken and destroyed that it would have been better for me if Richard had completed his threat and strangled me while I lay there.

I don’t know how long it was before I sat up. I did not think, I did not think at all about what had happened, or what I could do. All I could think of was an urgent, passionate need to be home. I wanted to be in my bedroom with the door locked. I wanted to be in my bed with the covers up over my head. I sat up, and then I took hold of the doorjamb and heaved myself to my feet. I staggered, but I did not fall. I seemed to have stopped bleeding. My dress was unmarked. I held tight to the door and took one shallow step at a time into the rose garden.

Misty was gone. I shut my eyes and then opened them again in the hopes that I was mistaken, that she was where I had left her. But she had pulled her reins free and taken herself off home.

I sobbed at that, the first sound I had made since I had said, ‘Richard, no!’ in a voice which would not have halted a mouse. Misty was gone and I could not see how I could ever get home. All I wanted, all I wanted in the whole world, was to be home and asleep.

My head was swimming, and my knees buckled and I collapsed on to the step of the summer-house. I rested my head in the crook of my elbow and let the spring sunshine warm my back. I did not think I would ever feel warm inside again. I stayed like that, quite still, for what seemed like a lifetime of numb misery.

Then I heard, in the woods, voices calling my name, over and over again, and a little silence between the calling while they listened for me. I heard hoofbeats on the drive, and Jem’s voice, harsh with anxiety calling, ‘Miss Julia! Miss Julia!’

‘I’m here!’ I said in a pathetic little voice. ‘Here, Jem! At the summer-house!’ I got to my feet and went down the drive to meet him.

He was riding Prince, and I saw the horse suddenly leap forward when Jem caught sight of me. He was beside me in an instant.

‘Did you take a fall?’ he said. ‘Sea Mist came home with a broken rein and her saddle too loose. I guessed you’d come off her.’

I nodded, too weary to speak and too full of pain and confusion to say the unsayable, to accuse.

And anyway, I felt that it was me who was in the wrong.

‘Could you ride?’ he asked me, ‘or shall I go home and send for the carriage?’

I nodded dumbly towards Prince. ‘I want to go home,’ I said pitifully. Jem lifted me up on to Prince’s back, and then vaulted up behind me. His arms were around me, holding me safe and steady, but for a moment’s madness I was suddenly afraid of him, of Jem, whom I had known all my life and who had come out calling and looking for me.

I bit my bottom lip to keep myself from crying out. I knew I had nothing to fear from Jem.

I had not smiled and walked with him. I had not kissed him before all Acre. And I had not promised that we should be married. All these things I had done with Richard, and then I had lied to him about my plans. I had never told him about the plan to live on Wideacre with James. I had never lied outright indeed; but I had kept silent.

And when he had first kissed me in the summer-house, I had smiled.

And when I had first felt his weight upon me, I had put my arms around his neck and opened my mouth for the taste of his tongue.

‘I’m going to be sick,’ I said abruptly to Jem, and turned my head away from him as I retched over Prince’s shoulder.

Nothing came but a mouthful of bile with the acid taste of fear.

Jem turned Prince’s head for home and took us down the drive at a steady walk. ‘Your ma stayed at home in case you were found, or walked home,’ Jem said gently. ‘Everyone else is out looking. I’ll sound the gong when we get in so they know. And someone will pull the school bell to tell ’em you’re safe found.’

I nodded. Prince was walking on the soft turf in the centre of the drive. Even that smooth walk jolted my broken wrist and my clenched stomach almost more than I could bear. But the Dower House was in sight, and I gritted my teeth and kept silent.

The front-garden gate was open, and Jem rode Prince right up the path to the door and shouted, ‘Holloa!’ through the open doorway.

I could see a figure coming out from the front hall, and I could feel myself longing for my mama’s safe touch.

But it was not my mama. It was Richard. My mama was behind him, but it was Richard who was first out down the steps and who reached up to lift me down from the horse, and who carried me in his arms like a little child come safe home to him.

‘Julia! Thank God!’ he said. ‘I’ll take her, Jem. There. Gently with that hand.’

Then Mama was at his side and her cheek was cool against mine. ‘Poor darling!’ she said gently. ‘Did you fall?’

I opened my mouth; Richard’s arms around me tightened slightly, imperceptibly. I glanced up at his familiar face, so close to mine. Richard, who had been my dearest love since my earliest childhood. His eyes were shining, he was smiling at me with such warmth, but a little hint of devilry lay at the back of his blue eyes.

‘Tell your mama, Julia,’ he said, and his voice was warm with laughter. ‘Tell us what happened and how you came to hurt your hand like this.’

It was impossible.

I could no more have told her the truth than I could have shouted obscenities at her. I would have been too shamed. Shamed for her, shamed for Richard and shamed for me.

My throat tightened and the tears poured down my face. ‘I fell,’ I said. My throat was still sore and my voice was croaky. ‘I fell from Misty and she ran off.’

Richard turned at once and took me towards the house, Mama holding my sound hand in hers as we went up the stairs to my room. Richard put me gently on the little bed and turned for the door. He paused in the doorway and looked at me, his face alight with amusement, and he closed one eye in a wink as if we shared a most delightful secret. Then he was gone.

I slept until early afternoon when I woke to the noise of my bedroom door opening, and Mama came in with a tray in both hands and her eyes on the level of the milk in the jug.

‘Tea,’ she said. ‘Tea for the invalid. Julia, my darling, I cannot tell you what a fright you gave us all!’

I tried to smile. But I had no smile. And when I sat up in bed, I found my lips were trembling so that I could scarcely speak.

‘My wrist hurts,’ I said childishly.

Mama looked at it. ‘Good gracious,’ she said. ‘It looks badly bruised, or even broken.’ She put down the tray and went straight away out of the room. I heard her footsteps running down the stairs and then I heard her and John come back up together.

He looked at my hand, half clenched against the pain, blue as an iris. ‘Broken,’ he said across me to my mama. ‘You’d best go out, Celia – this is something Julia and I will be better doing alone.’

My mama looked to me. ‘Shall I stay?’ she asked.

‘No,’ I said, though I was past caring.

‘I’ll get my bag,’ Uncle John said.

Setting the broken bone in my wrist was a painful business. Brutish. But in some odd way I welcomed the pain. It was clear, forceful. It was one of the few things left in the world which I could be sure of. The pain of a broken wrist. The small square of Wideacre sky seen from my window. And Richard’s sly, naughty smile.

‘You’ll stay abed for dinner,’ Mama said, looking at my white face when John allowed her back in the room.

‘Yes,’ I said feebly.

‘Would you like anything now?’ she asked.

I drew a breath. I knew I had to tell her. Of course she had to know. ‘Mama…’ I started.

‘Richard said he would have his dinner up here with you,’ Mama offered. ‘I expect you would like the company, wouldn’t you, darling?’

I hesitated. The birdsong outside seemed to go quiet with me.

I could not say it. I could not tell her what he had done to me. I could not tell her how I had lain back and smiled and let it happen. I could not tell them that John’s son and the part heir to Wideacre was a rapist.

‘Yes,’ I whispered. ‘Richard can have his dinner up here.’

‘Good,’ Mama said, businesslike. ‘He’s out in the stables now, seeing to your horse.’

Something broke in my head at that – through the haze of laudanum and the heaviness of my sin. I sat up in bed, and I spoke across Uncle John to my mama. ‘No!’ I said. ‘Mama, please! Please don’t let him touch Misty.’

She shot a bewildered look at John as if this might be some symptom of a blow on the head or high temperature.

‘Please!’ I said urgently. ‘Promise me, Mama! Don’t let him touch my horse.’

‘No, my darling,’ she said gently. ‘Not if you do not wish it. I will go down to the stables now and tell him to come away from her, and leave her to Jem if that is what you wish.’

‘It is,’ I said, and sank back on the pillows.

‘Now sleep,’ John said authoritatively. ‘Sleep until dinnertime. There will be no more pain and there is nothing to worry you, so sleep, Julia.’

I smiled towards him, but I could barely see his face; the room was wavering before my eyes. I think I was asleep before the two of them had left the room.

I slept until dinner.

Richard came upstairs and Jenny Hodgett served our meal and stood discreetly at Richard’s elbow throughout.

I ate little, for I was not hungry. And every now and then I would look at Richard and feel my eyes fill with useless, inexplicable tears. I felt that it was my fault. My fault that it had happened. My fault that I had not told at once, the minute I was home, that through my cowardice Richard and Mama, Uncle John and I would all be living a lie. I had not told when I should have told. And now I could say nothing. I could not even stop Richard smiling at me in that familiar, conspiratorial way.

When Jenny brought up a dish of tea for me, she had a message from Uncle John: if ‘I felt well enough, Mr Megson was downstairs and would speak with me. Richard left the room and Jenny helped me from my bed and into my wrapper. I knew it must be something important for Ralph to come to the house at this time of night, and I paused before my mirror to push my hair back and tie it with a ribbon. I knew that I would not be able to tell Ralph either. I wondered if he would know without being told that I had lost my honesty, that I was a liar.

Ralph and Uncle John were downstairs in the library. He smiled at me and asked after my accident, and apologized for calling me downstairs when I was unwell. I nodded. Ralph and I had always been mercifully brief with each other.

‘Clary Dench is missing,’ he said shortly. ‘I’m trying to discover when she was last seen and if she had plans to go away for the holiday.’

I took a deep breath. I could scarcely understand what he was saying. ‘I saw her on the downs, at the maying,’ I said. ‘She said she was going home, and she left early. She was planning no holiday away from Acre.’

Ralph nodded. ‘I can’t believe she’d go off without a word to anyone,’ he said, half to Uncle John, half to me.

‘D’you think some harm has befallen the girl?’ Uncle John demanded.

Ralph grimaced and glanced at me in case I could help him. ‘It’s always hard to tell with wenches,’ he said. ‘I’ll not turn out the village to hunt for her on a fool’s errand. It’s their first holiday in years and they’ve been out once today already looking for Miss Julia.’

‘Clary’s not flighty,’ I said. The words I was speaking were echoing coldly as if I were speaking down a well. I knew I had seen true on the downs in the morning. I had tried to keep Clary with me then. I had been afraid to tell her how dark a shadow I saw on her. I seemed to be afraid to tell the truth to anyone. ‘She’d have told someone if she was going off. And I don’t believe she’d have left her family without a word like that.’

Ralph nodded. The door opened and Richard came in quietly and stood at one end of the long table, at the carver chair, where the head of the household would sit.

‘What would you wish?’ Ralph asked the air midway between Uncle John and me. He did not even glance at Richard.

‘Take two or three men and look around the woods for her,’ Uncle John said, his eyes on me.

I nodded. ‘Start at the Fenny,’ I said. ‘Clary always went down to the river when she was sad. And she was very sad today.’

Ralph nodded. ‘She had quarrelled with Matthew?’

‘Yes,’ I said, taciturn.

‘I’ll have a few out to look for her,’ he said. ‘But it’s a nuisance. I had promised Acre they would have a couple of days free of work. Now I shall have to order some men out when they will want to be dancing.’

‘I’ll help,’ Richard said suddenly. We all turned and looked at him. He was very bright. ‘I’ll help. There’s little I can do to help on the land,’ he said pleasantly. ‘I’d be glad to save you some trouble, Mr Megson, and help with finding Clary.’

‘Thank ’ee,’ Ralph said slowly. He was looking at Richard very hard, no smile in his eyes. ‘That would be a help. I’ll send the men down to you tomorrow morn, as soon as it is light, unless the lass turns up home before then.’

‘I’ll be ready,’ Richard promised.

Ralph turned to me. ‘And you, Miss Julia? Will you be resting tomorrow or will you be well enough then to come down and at least watch the dancing?’

I was about to say that I would be well enough to go down to Acre tomorrow, but a pang in my belly made me gasp and my eyes filled with ineffectual tears. ‘I’m tired,’ I said weakly. ‘I’ll come down to the village when I feel better, Mr Megson.’

‘Aye,’ Ralph said generously. ‘Don’t come before you’re well. I’m surprised you fell at all, but then, good riders often fall the hardest. I’m truly sorry it was a fall from a horse I’d chosen for you!’

‘It was not her fault,’ I said. My lips had grown cold and stiff and I could hardly speak. ‘It was all my own fault, Ralph. It was all my fault. I should have known better.’

‘Now that’s enough,’ said Richard kindly. ‘I’ll fetch your mama to put you to bed.’ He turned to Ralph. ‘She’s still shocked from her fall,’ he said.

Ralph stepped backwards one pace and bowed. ‘I’m sorry to intrude,’ he said awkwardly.

I held my hand out to him. I wanted to say that he was not intruding, that he would never intrude. I wanted to beg him to look for Clary, to tell him of my foreboding for her, to make him see with the sight that something was badly wrong. But it was no good. I could not tell him that truth. I could not tell him that I had not fallen from my horse. I could do no more than look towards Ralph with one long imploring glance – and then the tears welled up in my eyes and rolled down my cheeks.

‘I am sorry,’ I said in a voice choked with weeping. ‘I am so sorry. I cannot seem to stop crying.’

‘Bedtime,’ John said with kind firmness. Richard came in with Mama and she helped me up the stairs to my bedroom and tucked me up in bed as if I were a little girl again. All the time the tears were rolling down my face and she wiped them with her own cool handkerchief which smelled of lilies, and then tucked it under my pillow and left me with one candle for a light.

I lay on my back and felt the tears roll outwards from the corner of my eyes and down my temples in drying little lanes of desolation. Then I gasped and sat up in my bed as I remembered that my petticoat and shift were stained with blood.

Wearily I got out of bed and went to the chest where I had bundled them, and I pulled them out. The blood was brown – old and inoffensive now. I folded them up and stuffed them on the embers of my bedroom fire. They smouldered and burned as I tumbled back into bed and slept, and it was doubtless the smoke from the fire that made me dream uneasy dreams about an empty house, and men coming with torches, and a fire which burned down the whole house and left nothing but ruin on the land.

Clary was dead.

I had guessed it. I had seen her in danger ever since I had looked along the lines of the raspberry-cane weeders and shuddered because she was not there.

No one knew who had done it, no one could think who would do such a thing to pretty Clary. But Richard said that they had found Matthew Merry beside the body. He was wet through and they guessed he had gone into the Fenny and pulled her out. She was in the river; she had floated down river to the weir above the new mill, but she had not drowned. They thought she had been strangled first and then thrown in the river. Clary would never drown. We had learned to swim together all those hot summers ago.

It looked bad for Matthew. He would not say how he had found her. He would not say how he had come to be beside the river before the search party was out. He would not say or do anything except cradle her distorted face in his arms and weep and stammer her name over and over.

I cried out when Uncle John told me, his face grim with the news Richard brought back to the Dower House. My mama was by my side at once with more hartshorn and water.

‘Drink this, my darling,’ she said, and I drank it, obedient as a little child, with my eyes fixed on John’s face, seeking the merciful numbness of the drug.

‘What can have happened?’ I asked, grief and sleep clogging my tongue.

‘She was strangled,’ he replied bluntly. Mama’s hand flew out to stop him, but he shook his head. ‘She has to know, Celia,’ he said. ‘She has to know what is happening in Acre. Richard is talking to the village youths and girls. No one can think what could have happened. She had been quarrelling with her betrothed. They think in Acre that she meant to jilt him.’

‘No,’ I said swiftly. ‘It could not be Matthew Merry. He has the sweetest temper, and he has loved Clary ever since they were children. He could not have hurt her.’

‘The lad who had the fainting fits?’ Mama asked. Her eyes went to John’s face. ‘He used to faint, and when he came to his senses, he had no memory of himself or what he had done,’ she said, her voice low.

Uncle John nodded.

‘He never did anything bad when he had his fits,’ I said suddenly. ‘Don’t look like that, Uncle John. He just had a weak head and sometimes he used to faint. He was the sweetest boy and he is a dear young man. He could not hurt a fly, let alone Clary! They were quarrelling, yes, but that does not mean he would hurt her. He adored her!’

Uncle John nodded. ‘He knew where to find her,’ he said quietly, ‘and they found him holding her body and weeping. It looks very black against him.’

‘No,’ I said positively. ‘It could not be. He would never hurt Clary. He would kill himself first.’ I broke off then, for I was afraid I would start weeping again. No one in the Dower House knew Clary and Matthew well but me. Mama and Uncle John might be kind, but they had not played with the Acre children under the Wideacre trees. They did not know that those two had been plighted lovers since they were little children, that Matthew would have died rather than hurt Clary and that this quarrel must have pained them both.

‘Perhaps Lord Havering can make something of it all,’ Uncle John said. ‘He is the nearest Justice of the Peace. Richard has gone to speak with him.’

I nodded. The truth of what had happened was only now starting to come clear to me. ‘And Clary is dead,’ I said slowly. ‘Would she have been in much pain?’

I saw Mama’s quick gesture to John again, but he answered me steadily and told me the truth. ‘Only for brief moments,’ he said. ‘The killer strangled her with his hands. But she would not have been in pain or fear for long, Julia. She would have lost consciousness very swiftly.’

I nodded. I could hear the words, but I could not speak, for a rising wave of nausea was threatening to choke me. I could see in my mind Clary’s bright pretty face and the tears in her eyes when she said Matthew had broken her heart and she promised she would meet me at the dancing.

‘I can’t bear it!’ I said on a half-sob. ‘On Wideacre!’

Then Uncle John took one arm, and Mama the other, and they helped me up the stairs to my bedroom. He poured me a measure of laudanum and Mama held my hand until my tight grip on her loosened and I started falling into sleep.

‘Mama!’ I suddenly called out, on the very edge of panic as I slid into sleep. ‘Mama!’

For in that second between sleeping and wakefulness I thought that I was Clary running for my life through the woods of Wideacre, and behind me was the man who was coming to kill me. Coming to kill me because I had seen something so dreadful that he had no choice but to kill me. I had seen that decision in his eyes, and I knew that if I did not rim faster than I had ever run in my life, he would catch me and throw me down to the ground and put his gentry-soft hands around my throat and tighten them until I could breathe no more. And in the dream I was Clary, running as if the devil himself were on her heels. But I was also myself. And I was as afraid as Clary.

I was more afraid, because I knew that when he caught her and she turned around and felt his hands at her throat and saw his face…then I would know who he was.