The Favoured Child

2

Richard’s long-awaited first riding lesson was tedious for my grandfather, humiliating for Richard and two long hours of agony for me. At first I could not understand what was wrong.

When Richard went to mount the horse in the stable yard in the warm end-of-summer sunlight, I saw that his face was so white that the freckles on his nose were as startling as spots in an illness. His eyes were brilliant blue with a sheen on them like polished crystal. I thought he was excited. I thought he was bridle with excitement at the prospect of his first proper ride on a horse of his own.

Scheherazade knew better. She would not stand still when he put his foot to the stirrup, she wheeled in a nervous circle, her hooves sliding on the cobbles. She pulled at the bit while Dench was holding the reins, trying to steady her. She threw up her head and snorted. Richard, one foot up in the stirrup, one foot on the ground, hopped around trying to get up.

Grandpapa gave an unsympathetic ‘Tsk!’ under his breath and called to Dench, ‘Throw Master Richard up!’

Dench clapped two dirty hands under Richard’s hopping leg and threw him up with as little ceremony as if Richard were a sack of meal.

My grandpapa was mounted on his hunter, a beautiful dappled grey gelding which stood rock steady, like a statue of a horse in pale marble against the background of the green paddock and the rich whispering trees of the Havering-Wideacre woods.

‘Remember her mouth is soft,’ Grandpapa told Richard. ‘Think of the reins like silk ribbons. You must not pull too hard or you will break them. Use them to remind her what you want, but don’t pull. I said, “Don’t pull!”‘ he snapped as Scheherazade side-stepped nervously on the cobblestones and Richard jabbed at her mouth.

Dench put a hand out and held her above the bit without a word of prompting. I watched uncritically. I had never seen a novice rider before and I thought Richard looked as grand as a Sussex huntsman, as gallant as one of Arthur’s knights. I watched him with eyes glowing with adoration. Richard on his own could do no ill in my eyes; Richard on Scheherazade was a demigod.

‘Let’s walk out into the paddock,’ said my grandpapa. There was an edge to his voice.

Dench led Richard out behind Grandpapa, his steady hand on the reins. He was talking to Scheherazade as they went past me, and I sensed that Scheherazade was anxious and felt uneasy. Richard on her back felt insecure. His touch on the reins fidgeted her.

I waited until they were some paces ahead of me before following. I did not want Scheherazade unsettled by footsteps behind her. It was Richard’s first riding lesson and I wanted everything to be perfect for him.

But it was not. I sat on the ramshackle fence and watched my grandpapa riding his hunter around at a walk and a trot in a steady assured loop and circle, and then calling to Richard to follow him.

But Scheherazade would not go. When Dench released her she threw up her head as if Richard’s hands were heavy on the reins. When he squeezed her with his legs, she sidled, uneasy. When he touched, just touched, her flank with his whip, she backed infuriatingly, while Richard’s pallor turned to a scarlet flush with his rising temper. But she would not do as she was bid.

My grandpapa reined in his hunter and called instructions to Richard. ‘Be gentle with her! Gentle hands! Don’t touch her mouth! Squeeze with your legs, but don’t pull her back! No! Not like that! Relax your hands, Richard! Sit down deeper in the saddle! Be more certain with her! Tell her what you want! Oh, hell and damnation!’

He jumped down from his hunter then and strode towards Richard and Scheherazade, tugging his own horse behind him. He tossed his own reins to Dench, who stood stoical, his face showing nothing. Grandpapa pulled Richard down from Scheherazade like an angry landowner taking a village child out of an apple tree, and, spry as a young man, swung himself into the saddle.

‘Now, you listen here, Sally-me-girl,’ he said, his voice suddenly tender and warm again. ‘I won’t have this.’ And Scheherazade’s ears, which had been pointy and laid back, making her head all bony and ugly, suddenly swivelled around to face front again and her eyes glowed brown and stopped showing white rims.

‘Now, Richard,’ said Grandpapa, keeping his voice even. ‘Like I told you in the yard, if you pull on the reins, you mean “stop” or “back”.’ He lifted his hands a fraction and Scheherazade moved forward. He pulled his hands a shade back towards his body, and she stopped as soon as she felt the tension on the reins. He drew the reins towards him again and she placed one hoof behind the other, as pretty as a dancer, and backed for three or four steps.

‘If you squeeze her with your legs, that means “forward”,’ Grandpapa said. He dropped his hands and invisibly tensed his muscles. At once Scheherazade flowed forward in a smooth elegant gait. She was as lovely as a fountain in sunlight. She rippled over the ground in a wave of copper. I clasped my hands under my chin and watched her. I ached with love for her. She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life.

‘But if you tell her to stop and go at once, then you will muddle her,’ Grandpapa said, letting her walk the circle while he spoke. ‘She feels you telling her to stop, and she feels you telling her to go. That upsets her. You should always be clear with animals – with people too!’ he said with a wry grin, taking his attention from her for a fraction of a moment. ‘She’s got a lovely pace,’ he said. ‘She’s a sweet goer. But she needs gentleness. Sit down deep in the saddle so that she can feel you there. And tell her clearly what you want. She’ll do anything in the world for you if you treat her well.’

He brought Scheherazade up to a mincing halt beside Richard and swung himself down from the saddle. ‘Up you go, lad,’ he said gently. ‘She knows her business. But you have to learn yours.’

He helped Richard into the saddle, and Richard got one foot into the stirrup, but he could not find the stirrup on the far side. He dug for it with his toe, trying to get his foot into the metal loop. Scheherazade at once side-stepped and bumped my grandpapa, who swore.

‘Calm down!’ he said to horse and rider. ‘You two will have to learn to calm down together. You are like a pair of violin strings wound too tight. What the hell’s the matter with your stirrup, Richard?’

‘Nothing, sir,’ Richard said; his voice was thin. It was the first thing I had heard him say since he had mounted, and with a shock I realized his voice was strained and he sounded afraid. ‘I could not find it at first,’ he said, ‘but I have it now.’

‘Well, learn to find it without digging your toe into her,’ Grandpapa said unsympathetically. ‘Don’t bother the animal. She needs to be gentled. Not kicked about.’ He twitched the reins out of Dench’s hands and a look passed between them which I was too far away to read. Dench turned and came towards me, his face as expressive as a lump of chalk.

‘Now,’ said Grandpapa, back in his own saddle. ‘Ride towards me.’

Richard dropped his hands in a stiff motion and Scheherazade minced forward. She walked as if she feared the earth were hollow, as if it might open up underneath her hooves. Seeing her gait, I sensed her unease and found I was clenching my hands in two fists under my chin, as wary as she was.

She did not like Richard.

That was the reason for the look between my grandpapa and Dench. That was why Scheherazade flinched when Richard was in the saddle’ That was why Richard sat awkwardly and his face was white. Something about him bothered the animal. She was as irritable as a cat with its fur rubbed up the wrong way from head to toe. She was sparky with her dislike. She was not easy, and I could smell her sweat, sharp with fear.

I could watch no more. When Richard stopped her with a short jab on the mouth and my grandpapa leaned over from his mount and loosened the reins between Richard’s fingers, I flinched in sympathy. When Scheherazade followed my grandpapa’s lead around the field, with Richard sitting stiffly on top of her, as awkward as though he were on a cart seat, I could feel my own shoulders slump as I willed him to be easy with her, to sink into the saddle so that she might feel his weight.

Then I could not stand to see any more of it. Richard’s face had lost its flush of temper and was pale again, his eyes narrowed with concentration, his face set. He did not look like a knight from a story book any more. He made me uneasy. I slid down from the fence, careful to guard my muslin dress from the splinters of the rotting timbers, and went back to the house, to the parlour, where ladies, in any case, should be.

I knew that Richard’s much heralded first lesson had not been a success, because I had seen it, but I would never have known it from Richard. When he came in for dinner, changed and washed, his smile was bright and his answers to Mama were confident. She believed him delighted with the mare, and I thought perhaps things had gone better after I had left my seat on the fence.

‘He’s heavy-handed,’ Grandpapa said dourly to Mama’s inquiry. ‘But riding’s in his blood. He should do well enough. And Harry Lacey – the old squire – had hands like mutton chops too. We used to laugh about it! I’d never let him touch one of my horses. But he taught Beatrice, y’know, and Harry. And Beatrice had the best pair of hands I’ve ever seen in this country. None to match ’em.’ He broke off, his smile reminiscent; perhaps he could see on the faded wallpaper of the parlour a bright redheaded girl who could whisper a horse out of a field. ‘She was a rider!’ he said. Odd that her son’s so awkward.’ He glanced over at Richard, who was straining to hear the conversation while he talked with Grandmama. ‘He’ll get accustomed,’ he said.

But Richard did not get accustomed. He had a round dozen of lessons from my grandpapa at Havering Hall and rode out with him in the Havering woods and up over the common. But he was never easy with Scheherazade. He sat on her back as if she were a tinder-box which might accidentally burst into flames. He and Scheherazade simply could not deal together. I saw it, and I wondered at it, but I could not have described it. Grandpapa was brutally frank.

‘Scots blood,’ he said to Mama. We were in the back garden of the Dower House, and Richard and Grandpapa had ridden over from the hall. Grandpapa judged that Richard might now keep his horse in the Dower House and ride without supervision whenever he wished. In any case, my grandpapa had wearied of teaching and was happy to hand over the job of coaching Richard to our groom Jem, or to Dench, the Havering man. Grandpapa was off back to London. He felt he had rusticated long enough.

‘Scots blood,’ he said ominously. ‘His papa, John MacAndrew, rides well enough, I grant you. But they’re not a nation of horsemen. No cavalry, damn small animals. No breeding, m’dear. On the distaff side he’s a Lacey, and there was never one of them who was not at home in a saddle; but he does not have the heart for it. He does not have the hands for it. He’s a good jobbing rider and he can get around safe enough. But he’ll never match his mama, Beatrice. God rest her soul!’

‘Well, I cannot regret that,’ my mama said in her soft voice, her face turned towards the orchard where Richard was trotting backwards and forwards. Scheherazade’s pace was steady and smooth, but her ears flickered warily. ‘Beatrice may have been a joy to watch on the hunting field, but she scared her family half to death with the horses she rode. And I cannot forget that her father died in a riding accident.’

‘Oh, nonsense!’ said Grandpapa impatiently. ‘You’re safer on horseback than walking down those damned uncarpeted stairs of yours, Celia. But have it as you will. The boy will never be a neck-or-nothing rider, he’ll never cut a dash. But I’ve done What I can for him. I’ve started him off and I’ll pay for his stabling.’

‘Yes,’ said Mama gratefully. ‘And we both thank you.’

Grandpapa nodded and blew a perfect circle of smoke out into the still afternoon air. ‘What about little missy?’ he asked. I was standing with my back to them at the orchard fence. And I gripped the paling of the fence post waiting for Mama’s answer.

‘I think we should leave it until she is older,’ she said. ‘She has no habit and we have no side-saddle.’

Grandpapa waved a careless hand. ‘Soon right that,’ he said.

Mama lowered her voice, but I could still hear her. ‘Julia has been raised too wild and too free,’ she said softly. ‘She is twelve now and she has to learn to be a young lady before she needs to learn to ride. I am happy that she should stay indoors with me.’

I said nothing, I did not turn my head. I felt my colour rising and I had a pain where my heart was thudding. Unless Grandpapa insisted, I should not be able to ride Scheherazade. Unless he declared that I was a Lacey and riding was in my blood and I must be taught to ride, I should be confined to the parlour and my only pleasure from Scheherazade would be to see Richard’s growing confidence with her. I was glad for Richard, of course, of course I was – but some little rebellious spark inside me said, ‘Not fair, Mama! Not fair!’

‘As you wish,’ said Grandpapa. And the decision against me was taken.

I lost my chance of being a rider, and I had to wait for Richard’s bounty. But as that summer turned into autumn, slowly but surely Richard suffered a greater loss. A greater loss than I could imagine. His voice started going.

It was like a new game for him at first. Sometimes it would be high – his familiar clear golden notes – and sometimes he could make it low and husky. One evening in the parlour he created an entertainment as good as a play, telling the adventures of a butterfly exactly in the style of the novel Chrysal; or the Adventures of a Guinea. The butterfly he did in a high squeaky voice, and the villains which it encountered on its journey through London thundered with his deepest bass. I played rippling chords and imposing fanfares for when the butterfly was received at court, and Mama laughed so much that the tears poured down her face.

She laughed a good deal less when she discovered that we knew the novel because Richard had ordered it from Grandmama Havering’s circulating library. My name was on the order, and my morals were the ones most likely to be corrupted from reading fiction. I took the blame; and Richard took the credit for his wit and imagination. He played with his surprising new voice and I believe he never thought – and I never knew – that his voice was altering for ever.

Its range was not always steady. It was not always controllable. Sometimes in mid-sentence it would suddenly go high or suddenly break and become husky. Richard ceased to find it amusing and snapped at me when I laughed. Then, worst of all-while he was singing a simple high sweet song and I played a lilting harmony on the pianoforte – his voice broke.

He frowned as if something small and trivial had happened, like a doorknob coming off in his hand. ‘Play it again, Julia!’ he said. ‘This stupid voice of mine…’

I played it, but my fingers had lost their confidence and I hit a shower of wrong notes. He did not even reproach me. It was only a high G, and he could not hit it. Three times we tried, my piano part sounding worse and worse all the time. Richard did not even complain. He just looked at me in great perplexity and then turned his face to look out of the window at the grey sky and the heaped clouds.

‘It seems to have gone,’ he said, very puzzled. ‘I can’t do it.’

He went from the room slowly, with none of his usual swinging stride. As he went up the stairs to his room, I could hear him clearly, all the way up the first flight of stairs, singing the phrase over and over again. And over and over again the leap to the high G quavered and broke. He had lost the high aerial reaches of his wonderful voice. His gift, his very very special gift, was being reclaimed.

After dinner, when we were in the parlour, he said confidently, ‘I’d like to try that song again, Julia. The one we were doing this morning. I had a frog in my throat this morning, I think! I couldn’t hit the note at all. I can do it now, I know.’

I fetched the sheet of music and propped it on the stand. I bungled the introduction badly, and the ripple of arpeggio that should have been smooth was as lumpy as an apple crumble.

‘Really, Julia,’ Mama said with a frown. And then she turned to Richard and smiled.

He was sitting in the window-seat, looking out towards the trees, as beautiful as a black-headed cherub, utterly unchanged. He drew a breath ready to sing, and I hit the right chord for once.

The note was wrong.

Richard snapped it off short.

And tried again.

My hands dropped from the keys. I could not think of what to say or do. For a second Richard’s pure lovely voice was there, but then it quavered and broke and was gone. Richard looked at me in utter bewilderment, and then at Mama.

‘Your voice has broken, Richard,’ she said, smiling. ‘You are becoming a man.’

Richard looked at her as if he could not understand her.

‘Early,’ she said. ‘You’re an early starter, Richard, at only eleven. But your voice is definitely breaking. You will not be able to sing soprano again.’

‘His voice will go low?’ I asked. I had never thought about such a process. Richard’s golden voice seemed such a part of him that I could not think of him without it. By the stunned look on his face, he could not imagine himself without it either.

‘Of course,’ Mama said smiling. ‘He would not make much of a man with a voice like a choirboy all his life, would he?’

‘But what shall I sing?’ Richard asked. He looked almost ready to cry. His colour had rushed into his cheeks and his eyes were dark with disappointment. ‘What shall I sing now?’

‘Tenor parts,’ Mama said equably. ‘Julia will be the soprano of the household now.’

‘Julia!’ Richard spat out my name in his temper. ‘Julia cannot sing. She sings like she was calling cows home. Julia cannot sing soprano.’

Mama frowned at his words, but remained calm. ‘Hush, Richard,’ she said gently. ‘I agree, none of us have your talent for music. But there are many good tenor parts you will enjoy singing. Your uncle, Julia’s papa, had a wonderful voice. He used to sing all the tenor parts when we sang together. I still probably have some of the music at Havering. I will look them out for you when we are next there.’

‘I don’t want them!’ Richard cried out in passion. ‘I don’t want to be a tenor. I will never sing a tenor part. It’s such an ordinary voice! I don’t want an ordinary voice. If I cannot have my proper voice, I won’t sing at all! My voice is special. No one in the county sings like I do! I won’t become an ordinary tenor!’ He stormed from the room in a fury, slamming the door. I heard his boots pound upstairs, loud on the bare floorboards. There was a shocked silence in the little parlour. I closed the lid of the pianoforte softly. Mama snipped a thread.

‘It was never music for Richard,’ she said sadly. ‘He just wanted to be exceptional.’ I said nothing. ‘Poor boy,’ Mama said with a great deal of pity in her voice. ‘Poor boy.’

Richard did sing again in public. There was an experimental service with harvest hymns at Chichester Cathedral. Grandmama Havering took the two of us, and Richard joined in with a clear light tenor. An unexceptional voice. We both remembered the times when he had sung with a voice as bright as a choirboy and people in the pews all around us had craned their necks to see Richard, with his eyes on the altar, singing like the angel Gabriel. No one turned their heads at Richard’s pleasant tones now. Only I looked at him with a little glance which I was careful to keep neutral. If he had thought I pitied him, he would have been most angry.

I said nothing at all until we were home and Mama had gone upstairs to take off her hat. Richard was idling in the parlour. I went to the pianoforte and opened the lid.

‘Let’s sing something!’ I said as lightly as I could manage it. I brought my hands down in a ringing chord and for a mercy hit all the right notes. But when I looked up, Richard’s face was sombre.

‘No,’ he said softly, ‘I shall never sing again. Oh, I may groan on a little in church like I did today. But I shall never sing in the parlour, or in the kitchen, or even in my bathtub. I had the voice I liked, but now it has gone. And I’ll never get it back.’

‘Your voice now is very nice, Richard…’ I offered hesitantly.

‘Nice!’ he shouted. But then at once he had himself under control. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It is very nice, isn’t it? Before it broke I had a voice which was probably as good as anyone’s in Europe. But they would not let me use it, or train it, or even see good music teachers. Now it is gone, and all I have instead is a powerless tenor which you tell me is very nice. Well, as far as I am concerned, that is the same as having no voice at all.’

‘What will you do, Richard?’ I asked. I found my lips were trembling as if Richard were telling me of some mortal wound. In a way, I suppose, he was.

‘I shall do nothing,’ he said quietly. ‘I shall forget the voice I had, and very soon so will everyone else. I shall forget that I wanted to be a musician. I shall forget the plans I had to fill Wideacre Hall with music. I shall concentrate instead on learning to be the squire. The squire of Wideacre. Now it is all I have left. It is the only thing special about me now.’

Richard said no more, and I never asked him to sing with me again. My pianoforte lessons from my mama continued with even less motive or effect, and Richard seemed to think of nothing but his last route to being, as he said, ‘special’ – being the heir to Wideacre. So while I was kept indoors as much as ever, Richard rode out every day, trying to conquer his fear of the horse and trying to learn his way round the land. The land, his land, the only thing he had left which made him anything other than an ill-educated lad growing out of his clothes.

He might never be truly easy with Scheherazade; but she was a beautifully mannered mare, and once Richard had gained enough confidence to give her clear instructions, she obeyed him. Dench’s young nephew, Jem, was in charge of our one-horse stables and he advised that Scheherazade be exercised every day so that she did not become too frisky. Each afternoon that autumn was frosty and inviting, so Richard went out early and stayed out late.

Sometimes Mama and I would sit in the parlour and I would read to her while she sewed. Outside, the leaves on the copper-beech tree turned a lovely purple and the fronded chestnut leaves went as yellow as summer silks. I read two volumes of poetry from cover to cover in those afternoons, while Mama sewed for the poor-box, and I sat with my back to the window to catch the light on the page in that gloomy parlour; and so that the sight of those burning colours would not make my heart ache to be out.

Sometimes we went over to Havering Hall in a little gig we borrowed with a pony, with Jem driving. The frosty air whipped our faces pink, and the sound of hooves on the hard road made my heart leap as if I expected some great treat. But at the end of the drive there was only Grandmama Havering – left alone at the hall now the London season had begun, splendid in her solitary state, creating some kind of stark beauty out of the emptiness of her days.

She invited me to stay with her, and, weary with the quiet Dower House, I consented, and then enjoyed myself more than I had thought possible. It was pleasant to be the only child in the house. It was pleasant to live without having to consider Richard’s preferences. My grandmama had created an air of disciplined peace at Havering Hall, which a woman can do if she has the courage to live by her own standards. I learned a lot from her that autumn. I learned that it is possible to look at a bleak past without reproach and at a joyless future without complaint. And the way to do that, without failing and without an inner plaint, is to keep one little part of oneself untouched, and free, and brave.

In the morning we spoke to the housekeeper or the butler, and then we took our walk in the garden. The grounds were horribly dilapidated, as bad as the ruined garden of Wideacre, but Grandmama walked among them like a queen at Versailles. With one hand on my shoulder and the other holding a basket for the flowers she hoped to find among the weeds, she paced down the gravel paths, oblivious to the nettles blowing around us, the ungainly grass scattering seeds over the paths and the burrs catching the flounces of our walking dresses. The flowers which had managed to survive years of neglect in this enclosed wilderness were to be cut and taken indoors, where Grandmama taught me about the elegance of a single bloom or two in a vase against a sparse background of leaves.

‘The art of happiness is in being content with what you have,’ she would say, looking with apparent satisfaction out of the dusty windows at the garden, yellowing like an uncut hayfield in the October sunshine. ‘And good manners depend entirely on appearing content with what you have.’

And I, innately polite and content (for what child of my gentle mama’s could be other?), would nod sagely and split a chrysanthemum stem for Grandmama to place precisely in a crystal vase.

My grandmama taught me more than the outward show of ladylike behaviour that autumn. She taught me an inner quietness which comes from knowing your strengths and your weaknesses – and the job you have to do. She taught me – without possibility of contradiction – that I was no longer a wild child. I would be a young lady. And it was I, and no one else, who would have to learn the self-control I would need to fulfil that role. So I learned to discipline myself, while Richard learned to ride.

And I think I had the better bargain of the two of us.

For Richard was afraid. He had learned that now, learned what I had seen when his face had gone white in the stable yard and Scheherazade had sidled away at his approach. She was not an old hack to tease in the meadow with a handful of stones thrown at her back hooves. She was not a bow-backed carriage horse that would strain for a carrot hung out of reach. She was a high-bred hunter, and when Richard and she were out alone on the common or the downs, he feared her. He was afraid of falling, he was afraid of being kicked. But more than that, he was afraid of all of her – of her bright colour, her brown eyes, her wide nostrils.

I spent three weeks at Grandmama’s and came home only when Grandpapa was expected again. Neither Grandmama nor Mama wanted me at Havering Hall when Grandpapa and his cronies from the London clubs fell out of their chaises swearing at the roads and lugging their cases of port.

Grandmama helped me pack, and sent me home with a bolt of muslin for a brand new gown as a farewell present.

“You may be a Lacey,’ my grandmama said as she stood at the front door with me, watching Dench put my little box under the seat of the gig, ‘but you are also my granddaughter.’ She made it sound as though being a Lacey and a granddaughter of hers were positions of equal importance, of vast significance in an admiring world. ‘Lacey, or Havering, or married to someone with no name at all, I trust you will always remember you are first and foremost a lady.’

I nodded. I tried to concentrate, but I was only a twelve-year-old child and all I could think was that I was returning home to Richard and my mama, and maybe Richard would allow me to ride Scheherazade. I hardly heard my grandmama telling me that there was more to life than a name and an estate, more to life than the man one might marry. More to life, even, than love. More important than all these things was the retention of one’s pride, of a tenacious little scrap of dignity, whatever one’s name, whoever one’s relations.

‘You are anxious to go home to your mama,’ she said gently.

‘Yes, Grandmama,’ I said.

‘And Richard?’ she queried. Under her searching look, I coloured and my eyes fell.

‘That is quite suitable,’ she said equably. ‘You are joint heirs of Wideacre, and cousins. I can imagine no easier way of reconciling the problem of joint shares than to make the estate one again under Richard’s ownership. And he is a charming boy. Does he treat you kindly?’

I beamed, our childhood squabbles forgotten. Oh, yes!’ I said emphatically. ‘And he has said ever since we were little children that we should marry and rebuild Wideacre together.’

My grandmama nodded. ‘If John MacAndrew returns home wealthy, it would indeed be a most suitable match,’ she said. But then she looked at me more closely and her face softened. ‘He’s not going to grow into a man who will stomach petticoat rule,’ she said gently. ‘He has been indulged by your mama and he is used to ruling you. He will be the master in his house, and you will have to obey him, Julia.’

I nodded. I could have told her, but I did not, that I had already served a hard apprenticeship in giving way to Richard. It had been my choice to obey him since we had been small children. I could envisage no change. I did not even want a change.

‘It is not always easy, obeying one’s husband,’ my grandmama said, her words stilted. She gave a little sigh which should have told me of a lifetime of self-discipline, of temper bitten back and never expressed. Of complaints, and slights, and accidental cruelties. ‘They will tell you in church that marriage is a sacrament. But it is also a binding legal contract, Julia.’

Dench had stowed my box and was standing at the horse’s head, waiting out of earshot, patient.

Grandmama tutted under her breath. ‘You may marry for love, my dear; but I would want you to remember that marriage is a business contract, and after the love has gone you are still forced to keep your side of the bargain.’

I looked at her uncomprehendingly, my child’s eyes wide.

‘When love has gone, when liking has gone, you are still married,’ she said sternly. ‘There is no escaping that. And the services you performed out of love, you have still to do out of duty. That is when you are glad you can say, “I am a lady,” or “I am a Lacey,” or anything which reminds you in your heart that you are a person in your own right, even if you lead the life of a bondsman.’

I shivered although the sunlight was bright. It sounded ominous, a bleak prophecy. But I knew in my loving, trusting heart that she was wrong. She had married fifty years ago in obedience to her father and, when widowed, married again to win a home for herself and her child. Of course marriage seemed to her a contract – and one which carried severe penalties. But Richard and I were quite different. Our marriage would be a natural extension of our childhood love. When the dream of a rebuilt Wideacre became finally true, I knew I would never have to search my heart for a sense of my own individual pride to bear me up through shame and pain. All I ever needed to define myself was the knowledge that I loved Richard and that I was Richard’s love. I would never need anything more.

Something of this certainty must have shown in my face, for my grandmama gave a harsh laugh and bent and kissed me once more. ‘There’s no telling anyone,’ she said, resigned. ‘Everyone has to learn their own way. Goodbye, my darling, and don’t forget to give those receipts to your mama.’

I nodded, and hugged her, and jumped up the step to the seat of the gig while Dench swung himself in beside me. Then I waved to her and smiled at her with love. I knew that she was a fine woman, a brave woman. But I had no thought that I would ever wonder where her courage came from; that I would ever need that courage for myself.

‘Home, then?’ Dench said.

‘Yes,’ I said. Sitting high in the gig beside Dench was comfortable. I could see over the hedges to where the self-seeded fields of Wideacre blew in a rippling autumn wind. I liked Dench, I liked the drawl of his downs accent and the way his face stayed still so that if you did not know him you might think he was cross, but then his eyes twinkled. And I knew, in the way that children always know, that he liked me.

‘Glad to be going back to your mama?’ he asked kindly.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And my cousin Richard too. Is he riding much, do you know, Dench?’

‘Aye,’ he said. He gathered the reins in one hand as we turned left down the lane towards Acre. ‘But Jem tells me his hands are as heavy as ever. He’ll ruin that mare’s mouth. I don’t know what m’lord was thinking of.’

‘She’s his horse!’ I said, instantly on the defence.

‘Aye,’ Dench said, wilfully misunderstanding me. ‘You don’t get a chance, do you, Miss Julia?’

‘Ladies often don’t learn to ride until they are married and their husbands teach them,’ I said, quoting the wisdom of my mama without much conviction.

‘Ever sat on her back at all?’ Dench asked me with a swift sideways glance. ‘Not sneaked into her stable and climbed on from the door?’

‘Yes,’ I said, incurably truthful. ‘But Richard caught me.’

‘Oh, aye?’ Dench said invitingly, and waited for me to go on. But I did not.

Richard had come into the stable just as I had swung a leg over Scheherazade’s back, having lured her to the door with two windfall apples in a bucket. She had thrown her head up and moved back when I had launched myself from the half-door on to her back. But once she had felt my weight she had dipped her head to the bucket again. My skirts up, sitting astride, I was a proper hoyden and I knew it. But, oh! the delight of feeling that smooth warm skin and the fretwork of muscles beneath it. And to be so high in the stable! And when she lifted her head, I saw her column of neck and that great wave of her mane! I adored her. I dropped my face into her mane and hugged her neck in passion.

I did not hear the footsteps come across the yard. I did not even hear the stable door open and close.

‘Get down.’ Richard’s tone was icy. I sat up and looked around wildly. Richard had come into the stable and closed the door behind him. He was standing at the back of the stable in the shadows, the saddle and bridle held before him, his riding crop stuck under the stirrup leather.

‘Get down,’ he said again. His voice was light, but I am no fool. I saw his eyes were blazing; even in the darkness of the stable I could see the heat behind them.

I clung to the mane and swung my leg over and slid down Scheherazade’s smooth flank, loving the touch of her shoulder against my cheek.

As soon as I dropped on the straw, I turned to face him. ‘Richard…’ I said apologetically.

He had put down the saddle and bridle while I was dismounting and he dragged me away from the shelter of Scheherazade’s side. He held my wrist in one hard unforgiving hand and pulled me into the corner of the stable. Scheherazade threw her head up and shifted uneasily, and Richard gave a little gasp and swung us around so that I was between him and the restless animal.

‘Scheherazade is my horse,’ he hissed, his face very close to mine. ‘Lord Havering gave her to me. He taught me to ride on her. You may be a Lacey, but it is my papa who pays the bills here. Lord Havering may be your grandpapa, and not mine, but he gave the horse to me. And I warned you not to touch her, didn’t I?’

My lips were trembling so much that I could not speak. It was worse than the pretend water-snakes in the river all those years ago in childhood. It was the worst it had ever been. ‘Richard…please…’ I said pitifully.

‘Didn’t I he insisted.

Y-Yes,’ I said. ‘But Richard…’

‘I warned you, Julia,’ he said authoritatively. ‘I told you that you would learn to ride when I was ready to teach you. And I told you to keep away from my horse.’

I could not stop the tears from coming, and they rolled down my face, making my cheeks as wet as if I were out in a rainstorm, while I looked and looked at Richard, hoping he would see them and release the hard grip on my wrist and catch me up to him, and kiss me kindly, as he always did.

‘Didn’t I warn you?’ he shouted.

‘Yes! Yes!’ I sobbed. There seemed nothing I could do to break the spell of this shadowed misery. Mama was far away in the house, Jem was cleaning tack in the tack room or sitting in the kitchen. Richard had me at his mercy, and he had no mercy. He had indeed warned me. He had told me not to touch his horse and I had disobeyed him. He had warned me that if I did, he would be angry. And I had foolishly, irresistibly gone to Scheherazade and now I had to face Richard’s blazing blue-eyed wrath. Then, suddenly, my own temper went.

‘You don’t even like her!’ I said. ‘You never did like her as much as me! You promised you’d teach me to ride her, but I don’t believe you ever will. All you ever cared about was your stupid singing! You can’t do that any more! And you can’t ride either!’

Richard grabbed me and spun me around, his full weight throwing me against the stable wall. TU kill you!’ he said in the total rage of a child.

I had both hands braced against the wall. For a moment I was literally too frightened to move. He took advantage of that second’s immobility to snatch up his riding crop from the floor beside his saddle, and then he grabbed me in a hard one-armed embrace and brought the twangy well-sprung crop down with all his strength on my back.

He meant to cane me – as Stride very occasionally was ordered to beat him. But I twisted in his grip and the blow fell on my side. Even through my jacket it stung, and I screamed with the shock of it, and the hurt of it. Three times he whipped me, before I wriggled free from his hold and dashed to the shelter of Scheherazade’s side. She was frightened, her hooves shifting nervously, he eyes rolling and showing their whites. Without a second’s thought I dived under her belly and came up on the other side so that she was between Richard and me, and I peeped at him from under her tossing neck.

The rage had gone from Richard’s face; he looked ready to weep. ‘Oh, Julia!’ he said, his voice choked.

But I was beyond reconciliation. Shielded by the horse, I turned for the stable door, struggled with the lock and dashed out of the stable, banging the door behind me.

I did not go to the house, though I could see the light from the parlour window spilling out over the drive. I ran instead to where I could be alone, to the hayloft above the stables where the few bales of hay were stored. I flung myself face down on one of them and wept as if I could not stop; I wept for the pain and the humiliation, and for the fright that my own anger had given me, that had made me taunt Richard and had made him wish me dead.

I gave little screaming sobs, muffled by a fist pressed against my mouth, for I wanted no one to hear me. He had hurt me so! And he could not love me at all if he could treat me thus! And the flame of my own anger burned inside me and said that I should not love him, not ever, not ever again. That we should not even be friends. He had bullied me long enough. This wicked attack would be the last time he would ever make me cry.

The hay scratched my cheek and grew hot and damp while I wept my heart out into its tickly dryness…and then I felt the sweetest touch in all the world – Richard’s hand upon my shaking shoulder.

He pulled me up, gently, oh, so gently, and he turned me around towards him. Oh, little Julia,’ he said in a voice of such tenderness and pity; then he cupped his hands either side of my cheeks and kissed every inch of my wet flushed face, so that my cheeks were dried with his kisses.

And I sobbed again and said, ‘Richard, you should not treat me so!’ I could hardly get the words out. ‘You should not, Richard! I will not love you if you bully me like that. You are wrong to treat me so, Richard.’

‘I know,’ he said remorsefully. ‘I know I should not do it. But, Julia, you must forgive me. You know I do not mean any harm. It is just an accident.’

‘An accident!’ I exclaimed. ‘Richard, that was no accident! You beat me as hard as you could! Three blows! Not even my own mama has ever beaten me like that! And you said you would kill me!’

‘I know,’ he said again, his voice warm with his charm. Richard’s easy charm. ‘I beg your pardon, Julia, and I swear I will never hurt you again.’ He knelt beside me on the straw. ‘Look!’ he said. ‘I am on my knees to you, begging you to forgive me.’

I hesitated. The pain was fading and Richard’s appealing, worried face was too much for me.

‘Say you forgive me!’ he entreated in a low whisper, his arms out to me.

‘I won’t,’ I said sullenly. ‘You are cruel, Richard, and I had done nothing but sit on her in the stable.’

He was silent at that for a moment, still kneeling at my feet. ‘A true lady accepts an apology,’ he observed. ‘I have said that I am sorry, Julia. And I am sorry. I am offering you an apology.’

My mama’s training, the lessons of my grandmama, the world we lived in and my own loving heart were too much for my sense of grievance. ‘Oh, Richard, all right!’ I said and I burst into tears afresh for no reason at all and he threw his arms around me and hugged me and kissed my wet cheeks and dried my eyes on his own white linen handkerchief.

We sat in silence then, in the shadowy hayloft, while the night air grew colder and the first pinpricks of stars came out like sparkles of frost in the autumn sky. And Richard said softly, reasonably, ‘I just don’t like people taking my things, Julia.’

And I had said – for in a way it was all my fault – ‘I know you do not, Richard. And I promise I will never sit on Scheherazade again.’

I would have promised more, but a slim new moon came out from behind a wisp of dark cloud and its light shone in my eyes, and I heard a sweet high singing which I always think of as the music of the very heart of Wideacre, which used to ring through Richard’s voice. This night it was not thin and peaceful, but somehow ominous. For some reason, I did not know why, it seemed like a warning, as if the moon were telling me that Richard’s expectations and Richard’s need to own things outright were not good qualities in a young boy, that I should not concede everything to him.

Then the moment passed, and I was just a tearful girl in a hayloft with a loving bullying playmate.

‘Master Richard don’t like you to even touch his horse, then?’ Dench said curiously.

‘No,’ I said, coming out of my reverie. I had not touched Scheherazade again, and Richard had forgotten his anger. He had taken to riding every day after that evening, and I had seen little of him.

‘Dog i’ the manger,’ said Dench briefly. ‘I reckon you’d ride well enough without teaching, Miss Julia. You’re the true-bred Lacey, after all.’

‘No,’ I said. I sat straighter on the seat beside Dench. ‘I do not wish to learn until I am grown-up, Dench.’

Oh, aye,’ he said, hearing the reproof in my voice and taking little heed. Then he clicked to the horse to lengthen its stride and we bowled under the great trees of the Wideacre woods.

‘Want to take the reins?’ Dench said casually.

‘Oh, yes!’ I said. Jem had let me drive our solitary ageing carriage horse, but this was the first time I had ever been in control of one of the smooth-paced Havering horses.

‘Here, y’are,’ Dench said generously, and handed the double reins into my small hands. ‘Hold them lightly.’ He watched as I clicked confidently to the horse as I had heard him do, and saw how my little hands held the fistfuls of leather as if they were precious ribbons.

‘Good hands,’ he said approvingly. ‘You have Miss Beatrice’s hands.’

I nodded, but I hardly heard him. The sunlight was dappled on my face as we drove under the branches of the woods. The wind, as sweet as birdsong, blew in my face. A great flock of starlings was chattering in a hundred tones in the hedge to our right, and over the derelict wheatfield the rooks were flapping like dusters and calling hoarsely.

‘No need to go straight home,’ Dench said, observing my rapt face. ‘We can take the gig around by the mill and home through the woods if you wish. The ground is hard enough for the wheels.’

I hesitated. We would have to drive through Acre and I was still afraid of the barely understood story of the ‘taking’ of the children. But Richard went to Acre for his lessons, and Mama had never specifically told me not to go there alone.

‘All right,’ I said and we went on down the lane past the Wideacre gates, which stood drunkenly open, rusting on their hinges, and whirled away towards Acre. The village street was deserted, the front doors closed against the wind. There were white faces at a few unglazed windows as we trotted by, and Dench raised a careless hand to the smith’s cottage and to the cobbler who sat idle before an empty last in his window. Then we turned left at the church down the smooth grassy lane towards the common land, past the idle mill with weed greening the water wheel, and deeper and deeper into the woods, into the very heart of Wideacre.

‘We can canter here if you like,’ Dench said, eyeing the smooth turf of the track, and without thinking I lightened my touch on the reins and felt the carriage leap forward as the rhythm of the hooves speeded up and the bars of sunlight on the grass came flickering over me.

‘Like it?’ Dench said, his voice raised over the rush of the wind and the jingle and creak of the carriage and tack.

Oh, yes!’ I yelled, and my voice was like a sweet call to the horse to go faster, and he pricked his ears, blew air out in a snort and plunged forward.

‘Woah!’ Dench yelled in sudden alarm and grabbed the reins from me. He nearly knocked me from my seat with his desperate lunge, and elbowed me hard to hold me in.

‘What…?’ I said as he hauled roughly and the horse and gig skidded to a slithering standstill. Dench abruptly backed the horse, and I saw what he had seen down one of the grassy rides to our left: Scheherazade, loose in the woods, her saddle askew, her reins broken. When she saw the carriage, she raised her head to whinny at the horse and came trotting towards us.

‘Damnation,’ said Dench levelly. ‘Where’s that cow-handed youngster?’

I tumbled from the gig and caught one trailing rein. Scheherazade whickered and snuffed at me. ‘Richard!’ I called into the woodland. ‘Richard! Where are you?’

There was no reply. A jay called harshly and a woodpecker whooped as it flew dipping up and down, away from us. The wood-pigeons cooed as if all were well. But there was no answering call from Richard.

I glanced back at the gig for guidance. Dench was scowling.

‘Cow-handed,’ he said, making it sound like an oath. I led Scheherazade back to the gig. He glanced briefly at her, a comprehensive raking survey. ‘Not hurt,’ he said. ‘So chances are he fell off all on his own.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Where does he usually ride?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said helplessly. ‘The common, up on the downs. In the woods. Different places.’

‘Could be anywheres,’ Dench said sourly, scowling at the ragged field to our right and the hill of purple heather of the common land beyond. ‘Could have gone home, walked home. Picked himself up and walked home,’ he said more cheerfully. Then his face lowered again. ‘Cow-handed,’ he said under his breath. He turned abruptly and swung down from the seat of the gig and went to the carriage horse. He started undoing its tack and took the horse from the shafts.

‘Hold him,’ he said briefly to me, and he took Scheherazade’s reins from me. He knotted the break in her reins and pulled her saddle aright. He glanced at me and shortened the stirrups, Richard’s stirrups, by guess. Then he brought Scheherazade to me, where I was standing by the carriage horse’s head.

‘You’re to ride home,’ he said. ‘Stop at the mill on the way, see if there’s anyone there and tell ’em Richard had a fall and they’re to turn out and look for him. Stop at Acre and tell Ned the smith, he’ll know what to do. I’ll ride towards the Dower House along the bridle-track and see if he’s walking home or if he fell there.’

I gaped at him. ‘I cannot ride,’ I said. ‘I told you! Richard never taught me!’

Dench swore under his breath and motioned to me to put one foot up so he could heave me into the saddle like a stable lad. I went astride, my gown bunched around me, my ankles and even my calves exposed.

‘Course you can ride,’ Dench said. ‘You’re a Lacey.’

He tossed the reins up to me and turned his back as if he need say no more and had no interest in watching for my safety. I sat as though frozen. But Scheherazade’s ears were forward and she felt solid beneath me. The ground was very far away, but I knew she was gentle, well mannered. I felt her at peace with me on her back, alert for my bidding. I leaned over and tugged my skirts down to cover my legs as well as I could, and then I straightened up and squeezed gently. Scheherazade moved forward with her smooth rolling walk back down the lane towards Acre. I felt completely at ease. I felt I had come home.

And I knew how to ride her. I knew it as easily and as sweetly as I had known how to hold the reins to drive the carriage horse. It might have been that I had listened so intently to Richard’s lessons that I had learned to ride sitting on the fence. But when Scheherazade moved and I went with her, as smoothly as perfectly matched dancers, I knew it was something else. I came from a long line of famous horse riders, and to be on horseback in the Wideacre woods was my natural place. Driving a horse on Wideacre had been bliss indeed, but riding Scheherazade up a grassy track with the afternoon sun on my cheek was a most earthly paradise.

Except that Richard…with a sudden gasp I remembered that Richard was missing, perhaps lying somewhere hurt. Without meaning to signal to the horse, I had tensed, and instantly obedient Scheherazade broke into a trot, a springy pace which nearly unseated me. I grabbed on to the pommel of the saddle and gritted my teeth as I banged up and down in the saddle, sliding hopelessly from one side to another and trying to right myself. I could remember Grandpapa bellowing to Richard to rise and sit with the trot, and I tried, without much hope, to rise in the stirrups and to sit down again. Almost at once I caught the rhythm. Scheherazade was long-legged and her pace steady. The awful teeth-rattling bumping stopped and I felt safe again. We were travelling fast, too, and were nearly at the gate to the mill, and I sat down in the saddle and gently tightened the reins. Scheherazade slowed at once, and stopped at the garden gate of the miller’s house.

‘Miller Green! Miller Green!’ I called, giving him his title, though he had ground no wheat in ten years, not since the night when the hall had been burned and looters had robbed the grain wagons stored in his yard.

The door opened slowly. Old Mrs Green put her head out. ‘Not here,’ she said, surly. ‘They’re all at the fair, looking for work.’

She had been a proud woman once, mistress of the mill with her own pew in the church. The loss of their livelihood had broken her spirit. Four big sons in the house and a husband to feed, and no money coming in from any of them. A river flowed past the garden to turn the mill wheel, but there was no wheat to grind. Not one of them had seen farm meat on the table for ten years, nor fresh fruit except the wild berries in season, nor white flour once they had scraped the millstone clean of dust.

‘There’s been an accident,’ I called to her. ‘My cousin Richard may be lying hurt in the woods, or on the common. When your men come home, will you send them out to look for Richard, Mrs Green?’

She looked at me dully. ‘Miss Beatrice’s son?’ she asked me, and then she scowled. ‘Nay,’ she said with grim satisfaction. ‘I won’t do that. I wouldn’t send my men out to do a favour for the Laceys. Least of all when they come home tired after a day on the tramp looking for work, when there’s no work to be had.’

I stared at her blankly, with growing fright. If Richard was injured, perhaps with broken bones, he should be found at once. If Mrs Green would not help, if Acre would not help, it might take hours to find him. Without thinking of anything except the desperate need to get help to Richard, I dropped down from Scheherazade’s high back and looped her reins over the gate. Mrs Green was old, stooped, and I was lanky and growing tall for my age. I went up to her and she was barely a head taller than me. She looked down into my child’s face and saw an unchildlike determination.

‘He may be Beatrice’s-son,’ I said, ‘but he’s my cousin. And I love him more than anything else in the world. Please help him.’

Some of the hardness went out of her face when she saw me-not a Lacey on horseback, but a girl at her cottage door, white-faced, begging for aid.

‘Eh, well,’ she said resignedly. ‘They’ll be back within the hour. I dare say they’ll turn out for him then.’

I felt my eyes suddenly fill with tears of relief. ‘Thank you,’ I said huskily. Then I turned and walked down the little path and used her tumbledown garden wall as a mounting block to reach Scheherazade’s saddle high above me. I trotted back down the track to Acre and I knew she was watching and that the incomprehensible hardness had gone from her face.

Without thinking of it, I had been riding easily, confidently, and as we rounded the corner to Acre I sat down deeper in the saddle and let Scheherazade canter. We moved together, and I felt not a trace, not a flicker of fear, but only a delight in the rush of the wind and the thudding of her hooves and the sense of speed. We thundered up Acre lane like a regiment of cavalry, and I pulled her up at the smith’s yard with a yell of pure elation.

‘Ned Smith!’ I called, and he came out, throwing on his tattered apron, his thin face lit-up, hoping for work.

‘There’s no shoeing needed,’ I said quickly. ‘I am sorry. But there has been an accident, and Richard has come off his horse. John Dench is looking for him and he said you would help.’

The smith pulled his apron off again and tossed it over the empty anvil by the cold forge. ‘Aye,’ he said dully. ‘Some of the men will come out if they’re promised a penny for it.’

‘Yes,’ I said. Then I added awkwardly, ‘I am sorry there was no work for you today. I am sorry you heard the hooves and must have been hopeful. I am sorry we can pay no more than a penny a man.’

That brought his eyes up to my face. ‘Why should you care?’ he demanded coldly.

‘I am a Lacey,’ I said; and then, challenged by his stare, I went on, ‘I know it is all wrong now, but we were squires here. It is all wrong for the Laceys, and for Acre too, and I am sorry.’

His face warmed, but he did not smile. It was as though he had forgotten how to smile. ‘Eh,’ he sighed, like a man grieving. But then he was generous to me. ‘You were a babe in arms,’ he said. ‘No blame for you. I’ll get the men out for you, and we’ll find your cousin. Don’t fret.’ I nodded. ‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘Are you all right on that mare?’ he asked as he suddenly noticed me riding astride with shortened stirrups.

I beamed at him. ‘Yes!’ I said triumphantly. ‘I have trotted and cantered. But I shall go carefully home.’

‘You ride like Miss Beatrice did,’ he said, half to himself. ‘And you have her smile too. For a moment, seeing you up there, smiling like that, it was like the old days, before she went bad.’

‘Before she went bad.’ I heard his words over again in my head, and they sounded like a spell which might make everything suddenly clear to me. ‘She went bad,’ I repeated aloud. ‘What do you mean? My Aunt Beatrice was never bad.’

He gave me an ironic glance from under heavy dark brows. ‘No,’ he said. ‘That’s what they would have taught you, I dare say. We see it differently in Acre. But it’s an old tale, and little worth the telling.’

‘How do you see it in Acre?’ I asked. I was leaning forward in the saddle, staring at him as if he could explain so much. As if that one sentence about Beatrice’s smile before she went bad might tell me why we were so poor in the Dower House, and why the land around us had turned sour and grew nothing but weeds.

‘Not now,’ he said briefly, but I saw the closed-in look on his face which I saw on my mama when I asked her what went wrong with the Laceys and what caused the fire that night, all those years ago. ‘You’ve your cousin to think of now.’

I nodded. He was right. I shook my head to clear it of the mystery, and then I used my heel and the lightest of touches on the reins to turn Scheherazade and head for home.

The Acre lane is hard-packed mud, no good for cantering, and we took it at a brisk exhilarating trot. But the drive to Wideacre Hall is seldom used and is overgrown and grassy, and I could loosen her reins a little and let her stride lengthen into a smooth canter again. I did not check her until I saw the garden gate and Mama standing in the front garden; I thundered up, my hat tumbled behind me, my hair flying out over my shoulders, my eyes bright.

‘Julia!’ she exclaimed in horror. ‘What on earth…?’

‘Dench was driving me home when we found Scheherazade,’ I said breathlessly. ‘He took the carriage horse to ride and look for Richard and sent me to Acre to turn out the men, and then come home to you. Richard’s not here, is he? He didn’t walk home, did he?’

‘No, I was starting to worry,’ Mama said. ‘Oh! How dreadful if he should be badly hurt. But, Julia! You riding! How do you know how?’

‘I just did it, Mama!’ I said triumphantly. ‘As soon as I was on her back, I just knew how to do it! And she is so good, she is so gentle. I knew I would not come to any harm!’

‘But the men from Acre…’ said Mama, distressed. ‘Whoever did you speak to in Acre?’

‘Mrs Green at the mill, and then Ned Smith,’ I said. ‘They both said they’d help.’

‘Oh, dear,’ said Mama, overwhelmed by the sight of me thundering down the drive, riding like a poor girl with my skirts bunched up and straddling the horse, and by the impropriety of my giving orders in Acre, but most of all by her rising fear for Richard.

But then I saw her shoulders go back and her voice grow firm as she took command. ‘Take the horse to the stables and tell Jem to ride over to Havering,’ she said. ‘Tell him to tell her ladyship that Richard may be hurt and ask if we may borrow the carriage. You come inside at once.’

She ran up the path to the house and I heard her ring the bell for Stride. Then I just leaned forward slightly, and lovely Scheherazade knew what I wanted and walked towards the stable, her ears pricked for her stall. In the stable yard I swung down from her back and meant to land lightly on my feet. But as soon as my feet touched the paving slabs my knees turned to water and buckled under me so that, instead of confidently handing the reins to Jem, I could only slump in a crumpled heap at his feet, half laughing and half crying with the pain. Jem scooped me up and sat me on the mounting block, then lengthened Scheherazade’s stirrups so he could ride her over to the hall.

‘Will you be all right?’ he said, eyeing me. ‘Maybe I should see you into the house.’

‘I’m all right,’ I lied. In truth my arms and legs felt like pounded jelly. I ached in every bone, and my skin, where I had sat on the saddle, was scalding as if I had been burned. Jem rode Scheherazade up to the gate to the back garden and yelled through the archway for Mrs Gough. While his back was turned, I cautiously pulled up my skirt to see my legs. I felt I was bleeding, as if my legs were rubbed raw, but there were only a couple of red stripes where the saddle and the leathers had chafed me, and some wicked little red blood bruises where the soft skin had been trapped and pinched.

‘Gracious me!’ said Mrs Gough, standing over me, arms akimbo. ‘What a state you’re in, Miss Julia! Come inside this minute.’

I tried to rise to obey her, but as I did so, my knees gave way again, the ground beneath me looked like a series of steps, one level melting into another level. I looked up at Mrs Gough’s disapproving face and held out my hands to her. ‘I don’t feel very well,’ I said deprecatingly, and I dropped at her feet in a dead faint.

That was the end of my adventures for that day. Mrs Gough might be unsympathetic, but she was efficient. She had Stride carry me up the stairs to my bedroom, and sent up a bowl of soup with a dash of sherry in it, and a little bread. Despite my anxiety for Richard, I could not keep my eyes open and fell fast asleep.

And then I dreamed. A funny dream, all the events of the day mixed up and misunderstood, but with some feeling about them as if they were not me in the dream at all. A girl very like me. A girl like me but more firmly rooted in Wideacre than I. A girl who would never have tolerated a bullying playmate, a girl who was afraid of nothing. Not a quiet girl, not a shy girl. Not a good indoors girl at all. A girl that I would have been if I had not been my mama’s child. Like me, but with none of the wildness stolen from her.

She was on horseback, on a bay pony, but his bright summer coat was like Scheherazade’s had been in the autumn sunlight. And she was riding not in the woods where I had been that day but up along the little bridle-track to the slopes of the downs. She was me, and when she urged her pony fast up the pale muddy track, it was my laugh I heard, and when they broke out of the trees at the top of the downs, it was my sigh of delight. I looked to my right and there was a flock of sheep which I knew were my sheep, with a shepherd raising a hand in a lazy greeting, and I rode over to him and told him that the sheep were to be washed in the Fenny this afternoon and he smiled and pulled his cap to me as though I were the squire himself and able to order things on the land as I pleased.

I squinted up at the bright cold sky and looked at the horizon as if I owned it and I said to him, ‘It will rain later’, and he nodded as if there could be no doubt that I was right. He smiled and said, ‘Yes, Miss Beatrice’, and waved to me as I rode away.

I turned over in my bed in my sleep, and I heard a voice in my sleep saying, ‘The favoured child. The favoured child. She always was the favoured child.’

I opened my eyes then and blinked, as confused as a barn owl wakened at midday. I looked around the bare sunny bedroom. The blank walls reassured me that it was nothing but a meaningless dream. The shadows on the pale plaster showed me that I had only been asleep for a few minutes. I put out a hand and touched the empty soup bowl. It was still warm. I thought of Richard and made to rise from the bed to see if he was safe home, but my head was so swimmy I lay back on the pillow again until the room should steady. And while I waited for my head to clear, I dropped off to sleep again like an exhausted child.

I slept until mid-afternoon, and so I missed all the excitement of Richard’s return home. Dench had found him and brought him into Acre, slumped across the carriage horse, with Dench leading. He had broken a collar-bone and his left arm, and Dench had torn up his own shirt to make a temporary sling. Mama had sent the Havering carriage to Acre, and Ned the Smith and one of the Green lads had lifted Richard into it, tucked him up under one of the carriage rugs and sent him home. He was not in pain on the jolting journey, because Dench had given him some laudanum. Mrs Green had run out with the tiny precious phial as they walked past the mill. She had saved it from the bailiffs, resisted the temptation to sell it for food; and then given it away.

They put Richard to bed and called the surgeon from Midhurst, who praised Dench’s rough strapping, set the arm and the collar-bone and ordered Richard to stay abed for at least a week.

We had a peaceful few days then, Richard and I. He had a fever at first, and I sat with him and sponged his head with vinegar and water to cool him, and read him stories to divert him. By the fourth day he was well enough to talk and he asked me what had happened. I told him about Mrs Green, about Ned Smith, about Dench’s sudden decision in the sunlit wood to take the carriage horse and leave me to alert the village.

‘How did you get to Acre?’ Richard asked. He was lying back on a bank of white pillows and his face was still pale. His freckles stood out, dark as flecks of chocolate, on his creamy skin, and his gaze was down, his eyes veiled by his long eyelashes.

‘I rode,’ I said, and as I spoke the two words, my heart suddenly thudded in foreboding. I was sitting by the window to catch the wintry morning light, a book open on my knees. As I said the words ‘I rode’, it struck me for the first time that Richard might object to my having ridden – even in that emergency.

I could tell nothing of Richard’s mood from the untroubled curve of his mouth, from the dark lashes on his cheek. ‘Dench told me to take Scheherazade while he searched the wood for you. It seemed the only way to do it, Richard.’

Richard’s gaze stayed on the counterpane. ‘Dench told you to ride my horse,’ he said softly. ‘But, Julia,’ he said and then paused. ‘You do not know how to ride.’

‘I know!’ I said with a nervous laugh. ‘I know I do not!’ I said again. ‘But Dench threw me up into the saddle, and Scheherazade was so good! It must have been all that schooling you have given her, Richard!’ I shot a look at him, but his face was still impassive. ‘She knew her way home, of course,’ I said. ‘I just sat on her. It was not proper riding, Richard. Not proper riding like you do.’

‘No,’ he said softly. ‘Did you just walk?’

‘Not all the way,’ I said hesitantly.

‘Not all the way,’ he repeated as slowly as if he were writing down my answer in a copy-book. ‘She did not walk all the way. So, Julia, did you trot?’

‘Yes,’ I said quickly. Too quickly. ‘I trotted her a little.’

‘You trotted,’ he repeated again. ‘Your first time on horseback and you trotted? A rising trot, Julia? Or did you just bump about, clinging on and hoping for the best?’

‘I trotted properly!’ I said, stung. ‘And I cantered too!’

Richard’s head snapped up. His eyes were as black as the centre of a thundercloud.

‘You took my horse without my permission and you cantered her?’

‘Richard!’ I said desperately. ‘I had to! I had to! Dench told me to! He had to look for you and I had to call out Acre and come home and tell Mama. I could not refuse to go. Dench knew what to do and he ordered me!’

There was an utter silence.

‘Dench, was it?’ Richard asked.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘You should have refused,’ Richard said, a little frown on his face.

‘I didn’t know what to do!’ I said. ‘I didn’t know what to do, Richard. Dench seemed to know what had to be done, so I did as he told me.’

‘He never liked me,’ Richard said, gazing at the blank wall at the foot of the bed, seeming to see Dench’s impassive face on the pale lime-wash. He was seeing again in his mind Dench’s stony face as he watched Richard struggling to learn to ride, and Grandpapa’s impatience. ‘Not from the first riding lesson. Not before. He never liked me. He wanted you to have Scheherazade from the start,’ he said reflectively, reviewing the scene in the stable yard and remembering Dench’s smile as I walked towards the mare. ‘Then he used the excuse of my accident to get you on her.’

I said nothing. I knew it was none of it true. But the threat of Richard’s rage seemed to be passing away from me. I felt icy cold inside, and the thudding in my head, behind my eyes, warned me that I would have a dizzy nauseous headache unless I could get away at once from this stuffy room. I sat in silence on the window-seat, the cold pane of glass chilling my back, fearful to make a move in case Richard’s rage should come back towards me.

‘It’s Dench’s fault,’ he said.

‘Yes. Yes,’ I said, thinking only of my need to get away. Richard said nothing more, and I sat frozen.

He turned and looked at me and I saw with relief that his eyes were a hazy blue, as if he were daydreaming, as if he were happy. He smiled at me, smiled as sweetly as the dearest of friends. ‘Don’t look so terrified, Julia,’ he said as if it were rather funny. ‘I’m not angry with you any more. I thought it was your fault. But I see now that it was Dench’s.’

I smiled back, still wary.

‘You’re sure he ordered you?’ he asked. ‘You’re sure it was he who made you ride my horse? You didn’t think you would seize the chance selfishly for yourself?’

‘No! No!’ I said hastily. ‘It was all his idea.’

‘Good,’ Richard said, and smiled his seraphic smile at me. He put his right hand out to me and I reached forward and took it in my icy fingers. Obedient to his tug, I slid forward to kneel at his bedside and he put his hand to my face and stroked my cheek as gentle as a lover. Then he kissed my forehead, just where the headache was starting to thud, and at his touch I could feel my fear and strain melting away, and the beat of the pulse behind my eyes grow quiet again.

‘That’s better now, isn’t it?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ I said softly.

‘I hate it when we quarrel,’ he said, his voice low. ‘There is nothing worse in the world for me than when I think you have been selfish and ugly. You must love me like a true lady, Julia. You must be pure and unselfish.’

I blinked back the tears in my eyes. ‘I do try,’ I said humbly. ‘I try all the time, Richard.’

Richard smiled, his eyes warm. ‘I know,’ he said sweetly. ‘That is how it should be.’

Then I laid my head on his pillow and smelled the sweet nutty smell of his warm body and his dark curly hair and felt such a peace between us.

Richard was angry with me no more.