Wideacre

6

I came home from that drive my head full of anything but turnips. Celia’s inarticulate murmurs about Harry’s courting had made my head throb with jealousy and longing. She might be happy to hand over to me the control of her married life, but it was still her downcast eyes that Harry watched, even when I was near by. And when we stood side by side looking at the turnip field, he had bent his head low to see her pale prettiness under her parasol.

I left her in the parlour and went to my room to take off my bonnet. I looked at myself in the little mirror but my reflection gave me scant joy. If Harry preferred sugar and cream then my clear strong beauty would help me little. My green eyes looked blankly back at me, dark with desire. I could not believe, I could not make my mind believe, that any man would refuse me if I set my heart on him. I sighed and pressed my forehead against the cool glass and longed and longed for Harry.

My skirts hissed as I turned from my room and went downstairs. Celia might not want his love, but she had it. And while I flinched at the sight of his courtesy to her and his gentle words to her as she sat sipping tea, it was worse to be in my room alone, knowing that downstairs he was beside her on the sofa. I might spend more hours with him but never, never could I sit, my eyes downcast, and feel his gaze scanning my face. Never could I look up in the delicious certainty that my eyes would meet his. We were much together, but our magical moments were few. We were always interrupted; Mama was always coming in and out and her eyes were sharp on her beloved son.

At the turn of the stairs I paused. Some careless maid must have left the back-stair door open and one of the stable cats had sauntered in and was sitting, proud as punch, in the first-floor corridor. Mama was ill whenever she was in a room with a cat and it was a house rule that all the stable cats were locked firmly out. I should have to rush this one back to the yard and then air the corridor, or she would have one of her painful gasping attacks when she could not breathe and her face went from white to yellow. Her heart was delicate and last time she had suffered an attack the London specialist had warned her most strongly against risking another. So the rule against cats was rigidly enforced and I should save someone a dismissal if I got the animal away before Mama came up to change.

But as I went towards it something made me pause. And then I stopped stock still. I had no idea in my head, nor the shadow of a plan. But my passion for Harry moved me as if I had no will of my own. I was in the grip of such a longing to be alone with him that my aching sensuous body moved as if of its own volition. I feared Mama’s sharp eyes, her instinctive knowledge of me. The way she could almost smell my warm sighs. The cat’s eyes met mine, green to green, with a key to Mama’s absence as clear as a spoken word between us. Then my hand was on the latch of her bedroom door and the door yielded to my half-conscious touch. Like some obedient familiar the cat stretched and walked, tail proudly high, into the master bedroom and I shut the door behind it. I still could not be sure what I had done. I still could not have said whether I had let the cat in, or if the cat had let itself in with my hand only opening the door. Cat, Mama, Harry and I seemed caught in a web of someone else’s spinning. I was as unthinking as the cat itself. I went down to the parlour with my face as clear and calm as the Fenny on a summer’s day, and my eyes as opaque as the cat in my delicate mama’s bedroom.

I sat beside Celia and even accompanied her on the piano and sang a little duet with her, her thin warble keeping my richer voice more or less in key. Then Harry and she sang a folk song and I took the moment to excuse myself from the parlour and go back upstairs.

The blessed thing had made puddles all over the floor which I had to wipe up. But it had curled up on Mama’s bed and sunned itself on the pillow where her head would lie that night. I picked it up by the scruff of its neck and swept down the back stairs with it and set it on its feet outside the stable door. It gazed at me unwinkingly as if it knew we shared a secret — a discreet conspirator.

We retired early that night but I was disturbed around midnight by the sound of a door banging and running feet. Mama’s maid was probably carrying her a hot posset from the kitchen and a warming pan for her chilled feet. I half thought about getting up to see if I could help her, but my bed was too warm and I was too sleepy to move. Even as I thought I really should go to her, I fell asleep.

When I visited her in the morning the blinds were down and the room reeked of camphor and lavender water. She lay absolutely still on the great bed, her face white on the pillows where the cat had slept and licked its matted dirty fur.

‘I am so sorry, dear, but I cannot speak. I feel so ill, so very ill,’ said Mama in a thread of a voice. ‘Please tell Harry not to be concerned. I shall be better soon.’

I gave a small murmur of sympathy and bent over and kissed her. Her face was strained with pain and she was as white as her sheets. My own head ached in sympathy when I saw the skin drawn tight across her forehead, and my own heart thudded in fear when I heard how her breath rasped and saw her lips tremble. But my eyes gave away nothing, like the cat’s. I had planned nothing. I was guilty of no premeditated crime. The deceiving, unreliable old gods of the land had set magic at work on Wideacre and all I could do was to follow blindly wherever they were leading me. The insistent pull of my longing for Harry had brought the cat to wait for me outside my mother’s bedroom. Now she struggled for breath in a darkened room. Her pain made me ill. Ill with sympathy for her, and ill with anxiety on my own account.

‘Mama,’ I said weakly. I needed a smile from her to reassure me that this was only a passing illness. That although she looked as white as death she was still breathing, her fluttering heart was still working. She would be recovered in a few days, she would still have time to love me. She might still turn from her adoration of Harry and learn to value me. I might still become her beloved, her perfect child.

She opened her eyes wearily and saw my anxious face.

‘It is all right, Beatrice,’ she said with a hint of impatience. ‘Go to your breakfast and go out if you wish. I only need rest.’

I heard her tone of dismissal and it hurt me, as she was still able to hurt me. She turned her face away from me without the smile that I was waiting for. There was no need for me to stay. I closed her bedroom door behind me with the slightest of clicks and turned my thoughts from her all that day.

In her absence that afternoon, Harry led me into dinner and for the first time in our lives we faced each other at the head and foot of the candle-lit dinner table and dined alone. We spoke in hushed voices. Although Mama’s room was too far away to be disturbed by our talk, the murmur emphasized our privacy in the quiet house, the glow of the room a little island of peace and contentment in the darkened house on the dark land. I sat with Harry as he drank his port, and when he had finished we went to the parlour together. We played cards until Stride brought the tea table in. When I passed Harry his teacup our fingers touched, and I smiled at his touch but I did not tremble. Then we sat in companionable silence before the fire. When he glanced up from watching the burning logs in the grate, he smiled at me and I smiled back without a shadow of need.

It was an evening like an island of peace in a fast-flowing river of desire. We were tired and quiet like two children at the end of a happy, busy day. With no other person calling Harry’s attention from me, with no other person frightening me with the prospect of a loss of love, I was able to sit and smile and dream. And I was free at last from need. I went to bed with a chaste, fraternal kiss on my forehead and wanted nothing more. I slept soundly that night with no ache of desire and no confusing dreams of longing. I was secure at last in his affection and undivided attention and that seemed to me then so much. It even, for that one magic, easy night, seemed enough.

The next day was so lovely we decided to make a holiday of it and we rode out together up to the downs. My mourning was at last reduced and I had ordered a pale grey riding habit which suited me well. The underskirt was a soft grey worsted and the smart little jacket was grey velvet. With a matching grey velvet cap on my head, I felt I could stay in second mourning for years. Nothing in bright colours could set off my figure better.

On the top of the downs the wind was stronger and bowled my cap away so Harry and I rode a race for it. He won. In truth I reined in and let him win, and he leaned low in his saddle and scooped it up on his riding crop. He cantered back to me and presented it with a flourish. I smiled with all my heart in my eyes.

The horses walked shoulder to shoulder on a long rein along the old drovers’ way across the top of the downs and we looked south to glimpse the sea. Larks struggled up and up and up, singing out their achievement, then closed their tiny wings and plummeted to the earth. In the woods a pair of cuckoos called amorously, irresponsibly, to each other, and everywhere there was the lazy rasp-rasp of grasshoppers and the whirring drone of bees.

I was alone on my land with the man I needed, and he had eyes only for me. Today Harry was nobody’s son and nobody’s fiancé. He was alone with me and my jealous, hungry heart could be still, knowing that all day and all evening we should see no one else. No one would come into the rooms when I was longing to be alone with him. His head would lift and his eyes would smile for no one but me.

The horses rubbed shoulders as they walked, and we talked together of Harry’s latest book about farming and my comments on what might work and what would not. We spoke of the house and of the changes that would come in October. Then, without prompting, Harry spoke of Celia.

‘She is so pure, Beatrice, so innocent. I respect her so much,’ he began. ‘A man would be a brute indeed to try to force her in any way. She is like a beautiful piece of Dresden china. Don’t you think so?’

‘Oh, yes,’ I said with ready sympathy. ‘She’s as beautiful as an angel and so sweet. A little shy perhaps?’ I let my voice make a gentle question of the statement.

‘And nervous,’ Harry agreed. ‘With that brute of a stepfather she can have no idea of what a loving marriage can be.’

‘Such a shame,’ I said carefully. ‘Such a shame that such a lovely girl, that your future wife, should be so cool.’

Harry looked quickly at me, his blue eyes piercing.

‘It’s what I fear,’ he said frankly. The horses ambled into a sheltered little dell and stopped to crop the springy downs turf. At our backs the ground rose steeply and below us a hazel coppice shielded us from the north. Sitting there we were screened from everyone and yet could see half of England looking west. Harry jumped down from the saddle and tied his horse. I made no move, but sat idly in the saddle and let my horse graze on a loosened rein.

There was a singing in my ears as sweet and insistent as the lark, and I knew it was the magic of Wideacre and the hum of the spinning wheel spinning the thread of our lives together.

‘You are a man of strong passions,’ I said.

Harry’s profile, as he stood at my horse’s head and looked away from me over our land, was as clear and as strong as a Greek statue. My body ached for him, but I kept my voice steady and low.

‘I can’t help it,’ he said and his cheeks flushed red under the golden colour of his skin.

‘I understand,’ I said. ‘It is the same for me. It is in our blood, I think.’

Harry turned quickly to look at me. I was sweating with nervousness like a mare put to the stallion. I could feel the grey gown damp under my arms. But my face was calm and clear.

‘A lady can be a perfect lady,’ I said. ‘Her public behaviour can be meticulous, and yet she can feel desire when she loves and when she has chosen well.’

Harry was staring at me. I could find no words to go on. I merely looked back at him with my passion and longing written all over my face certain that he would see the truth of what was between us.

‘You have a fiancé?’ he asked in amazement.

‘No!’ I exploded. ‘And I never wish to have one!’

I sprang from the saddle and reached out my arms to him. He caught me as I slid down and I grasped the lapels of his coat and nearly wept in anger and frustration.

‘Oh, Harry!’ I said, and my voice broke on a sob and then I could not stop crying. The ache in my heart was too strong, the singing in my ears was deafening. ‘Oh, Harry! Oh, Harry, my love!’

He froze as if my words had turned him to stone. But I could not stop weeping. I was ruined and he would never love me, but I could not contain myself. I had watched and waited for his touch so long that now his arms were around me I could not play the pretty maiden like Celia. I could not stop myself from clinging to his jacket as if I were drowning. I banged my forehead against the muscled strength of his chest and moaned aloud. He still did not move, but his arms around my waist were as tight as a vice. My sobs quietened and I bit my cheeks to force myself to silence. Slowly, painfully, I pulled a little away from him and raised my eyes to see his face.

Harry’s eyes were dark with desire and his heart under my hands was thudding. His mouth was trembling, just slightly, and he gazed into my face as if he would eat me alive.

‘It is a sin,’ he said in a low voice.

The world was spinning around me. I could hardly hear him; I could hardly find words to reply to him.

‘It is not,’ I said immediately. ‘It is not, Harry. It is right. You can feel it is right. It is no sin. It is no sin. It is not.’

His head came down to me and my eyes half shut in expectation of his kiss. He was so close I could feel his breath on my face and I opened my mouth and breathed in the air from his mouth in a little shudder of longing. But still he would not kiss me.

‘It is a sin,’ he said softly.

‘Worse sin to be married for ever to a woman who is as cold as ice,’ I murmured. ‘Worse to live with a wife who cannot love you, who does not know how to love, while I wear out my days in yearning for you. Oh, pity me, Harry! If you cannot love me, then pity me.’

‘I can love you,’ he contradicted me, his voice a husky rumble. ‘Oh, Beatrice, if you knew! But it is a sin.’

He was holding on to those four words as a talisman to keep his lovely head from coming down that fraction lower to crush his mouth on mine. I could feel his body was taut with desire and yet he had himself under control. He loved me, he desired me, and yet he would not touch me. I could bear his closeness and the half-inch between our mouths no more. I lunged up to him and bit him, as hard as I could, on his teasing, tormenting mouth. My riding whip was still looped on my wrist and I slid my hand from his chest and caught it dagger-like and stabbed it into his thigh.

‘Harry, I will kill you,’ I said and I meant it.

His mouth was bleeding and he took one hand from my waist to put the back of his fingers to his lips. He brought his hand away and saw it was stained with blood. Then he gave a great groan and flung his full weight on top of me. He ripped at my riding habit and as the buttons at the neck parted he moaned and buried his face in my breasts, kissing hard, and biting without mercy. I dragged his breeches down to his knees and he pushed up my skirts and petticoats.

Still half dressed and too desperate to care we rolled together on the grass as Harry thrust with impatient, unskilled stabs at my body, thumping his hardness into my thighs, at my back, against my wet softness until there was that one second of terrifying pleasure as frightening as falling from a tree, as painful as a knife blow and he found the sweet hidden secret place and pushed in, like a fist through curtains. For a split second we both froze still, stunned by the sensation, then he shook my body like a terrier holding a rat, and in seconds I was screaming. My legs and arms grabbed him to me and we writhed like frantic adders. With a great bellow Harry collapsed and lay still and I, hungry, greedy, insatiable, arched my back on the soft downs turf and rubbed and rubbed against him till I gave a great sigh of release and lay still.

Slowly I opened my eyes and saw Harry’s head against our blue sky and our larks singing up and up and up. The Squire of Wideacre lay heavily on me. His seed was in my body, his land beneath our coupled bodies; our grass was in one of my clenched hands, and the little meadow flowers and herbs drenched with my wetness beneath me. At last, at last, I had Wideacre and the Master. Our land beneath me, the Squire inside me. I gave a shuddering sob. The ache of longing I had carried with me all my life was gone, and my jealous anxiety had finally released me.

Harry tensed at the sound of my sob and rolled off me, his face a picture of guilt and misery.

‘My God, Beatrice, what can I say?’ he said helplessly. He sat up and buried his face in his hands. His shoulders sagged, his head bowed. I sat beside him and pulled my gown together at the neck, but not too close. I put a gentle hand on his shoulder. My body was still trembling with the shock of Harry’s rough loving; my mind was too dazed with delight to be able to think what was wrong with him.

Harry lifted his sad face at the touch of my hand and looked at me in abject misery.

‘My God, Beatrice! I must have hurt you so badly! And I love you so! What can I say? I am so ashamed!’

For a moment I gazed at him blankly, and then his words penetrated my dazed mind and I realized he was full of guilt at what seemed to him some kind of rape.

‘It is my fault,’ he said. ‘I have longed for you ever since the day when I rescued you from that brute. But God forgive me, Beatrice, I have kept seeing you in my mind as I saw you then, naked on the floor. Oh, that I should have saved you from him to ruin you myself!’ He dropped his head into his hands again in despair. ‘Beatrice, before heaven I never meant to,’ he said muffled. ‘I am a villain, but God knows not such a villain as to plan this thing. I did not dream such a thing could happen between brother and sister. I am totally to blame and I do not shirk my guilt. But, Beatrice, I did not know such a thing was possible.’

I put my hand tenderly on his silly head.

‘You are not totally to blame,’ I said gently. ‘And there is no blame. You have been dreaming of me, and I have been dreaming of you. There is no need for guilt.’

Harry raised his tear-filled eyes to my face with a glimmer of hope.

‘It is a sin though,’ he said uncertainly.

I shrugged, and at the movement my dress parted and one silky shoulder and the curve of my breast caught Harry’s gaze.

‘I cannot feel it is a sin,’ I said. ‘I know when I am doing wrong and this does not seem to me wrong. It seems to me where I should be, where I have been going towards all my life. I cannot see this as something wrong.’

‘It is wrong though,’ said Harry. He could not take his eyes from the gap in my gown. ‘It is wrong,’ he repeated. ‘And one cannot say something is not a sin just because it feels right …’

His voice, the voice of the authoritative know-all male tailed off as I lay back and shut my eyes. Harry leaned beside me, supported on one elbow. ‘You are not thinking logically, Beatrice …’ he said, and he said no more. He leaned forward and kissed my eyelids as gently as a downland butterfly alighting on a flower.

I made not a move; I barely sighed. I lay as still as a leaf as he traced a line of gentle kisses down my cheek, down my throat, and down the smooth flatness between my breasts. He pushed at the gown with his forehead and rubbed his face, as gentle now as he had been rough before, along the swell of my breasts and then took the crowning nipple in his mouth.

‘It is a sin,’ he said muffled.

His eyes were shut so he could not see me smile.

I lay still with the sun on my eyelids and felt Harry’s weight shift over to come on me again, and felt his insistent hardness. He might have all the resources of education in rhetoric but I had the high singing magic of Wideacre, and the easy pull of two young bodies. We moved together and there was a spark of pleasure like lightning before a storm as we touched, but came no closer. We rubbed like courting otters; face to face, body to body, legs entwined, biding our time.

‘It is a sin and I will not do it,’ said Harry. His denial was exciting to both of us.

‘I will not,’ he said again as he did. We rocked together and he slid inside me like an otter entering deep water.

‘Beatrice, my darling,’ he said. I opened my eyes and smiled at him.

‘Harry, my love,’ I said. ‘My only love.’

He groaned and fell on my mouth, and his tongue and his body stirred me at once. This time we were slower, more sensuous. I slithered down on him and twisted to give him as much awareness of me as I could. Harry’s ignorant bumpings on me had me shuddering with delight. Then we moved faster and faster till a great explosion of feeling when Harry reared up and banged my head and shoulders on the son turf of the downs in ecstasy and triumph.

Then we were still for a long, long time.

We rolled apart and dressed. I was quiet in my mind and sore in my body. From a saddlebag I unpacked ham, floury bread still warm from the baking, beer for Harry in a stone jug with a glass stopper, and a broad withy basket of Wideacre strawberries. We sat side by side looking out over our lands and wolfed the food. I was as hungry as if I had been fasting for a week. Harry fetched me a glass of water from the spring further down the hill at the start of the beech coppice and I drank in silence. It wells out of the chalk here as pure as filtered rain. It was icy cold and tasted green and sweet.

After the last strawberry we still had said nothing. I rolled on my back and gazed up at the sky and after a little hesitation Harry lay down beside me, then raised himself to look at my face. He rested his head on one hand and touched my face gently, nervously, with the other hand. As I smiled he took one tress of my loosened chestnut hair and wound it around his finger.

‘It pleased you,’ he said. It was not a question. He had seen and felt my delight, and it was with relief that I saw there was no need to lie.

‘Yes,’ I said, rolling to lie on my side as we faced each other mirror fashion.

‘Does it seem wrong to you?’ Harry’s moral certainties had been overthrown by his body, but always he would need words. Even now, sticky with pleasure and worn out from lovemaking, he needed to talk, to put into words the speechless magic that was in the air and the earth all around us.

‘We are the Laceys of Wideacre,’ I said simply. That statement of family pride still seemed to me the only explanation I would ever need for my behaviour, even though the man who had said it was dead and his son, my brother, had lain in my arms.

‘We are the Laceys of Wideacre,’ I said again. Harry was blank. He needed words and complicated explanations. Nothing simple would ever do for him. ‘Who else could there be for me?’ I asked. ‘Who else could there be for you? On our own land, where we rule. Who else could there ever be?’

Harry smiled. ‘You are as proud as a peacock, Beatrice,’ he said. ‘It’s only a little estate, you know. There are bigger places and older names.’

I stared as blankly at him as he sometimes did at me. I scrutinized his face to see if he was joking, but to my amazement he really meant it. He really could compare Wideacre to other estates as if anywhere else would ever do for a Lacey, as if anywhere else could exist for a Lacey.

‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘But they mean nothing. Here on this land there is only one master and mistress and they are always Laceys of Wideacre.’

Harry nodded. ‘Aye, it sounds well,’ he said. ‘And what takes place between you and me is a private matter which no one need ever know. As you say, on our land it is our affair. But we will need to be careful at home.’

My eyes widened. I had meant to explain to Harry that it was inevitable that we should be lovers, as surely as one season follows another. I was myself the heart of Wideacre and he had been the demigod of the harvest. The moment I had opened the barn doors to him I had opened my heart to him. The moment the earth grew for him, he was mine. I took him as easily and as naturally as the chalk soaks up rain. But Harry understood none of this. What he had heard, and what he was now thinking, was that on our own land we could meet and make love in secrecy. He was right. And to be able to love in secret and security would require some planning. But the picture in my mind of the chalk-blue butterfly coming to the flower was not the one Harry had, of hiding from the neighbours and deceiving the servants. I had thought no further than my insistent need for Harry, of the magic that had brought us to this little cup of land as naturally as one kingfisher finds another, though there be only two on the whole length of the river. But Harry had his man’s mind on loving me and he wanted to establish ways and means.

‘How could we meet in the house in private?’ he asked. ‘My bedroom is beside Mama’s and she is always listening for me. And yours is on the second floor where I could have no excuse to be. Yet I will need to see you, Beatrice.’

‘What about the west wing?’ I suggested, thinking aloud. ‘We hardly ever use the guest bedrooms, and the scullery and breakfast parlour downstairs are closed up. Why don’t we convert the parlour into an office for the estate work and I could move into the guest bedroom above?’

Harry frowned, trying to visualize the change.

‘The guest bedroom?’ he queried.

‘It adjoins your room,’ I said with half a smile. ‘Indeed there was a connecting door which was closed to make two shallow cupboards in each room. But we could easily have it opened up again. Then we could be together in perfect privacy at any time — day or night.’

Harry beamed, like a child promised a treat. ‘Oh, Beatrice,’ he said, ‘that would be so good.’

‘We’ll do it then,’ I said briskly, the dreamy sense of magic gone from me. ‘I’ll set the work in hand tomorrow, and I’ll tell Mama only that we are making an office for the estate work.’

Harry nodded but his face was shadowed again.

‘Mama,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘The faintest shadow of the idea would kill her. I could never forgive myself if we grieved her so. I could not live with myself if she knew. And then there’s Celia. And there’s your future to think about too, Beatrice.’

I could feel the wall of words building up inside Harry again and I sighed for my own easy, instinctive wordless loving. My eyelids flickered down so he could not see the rueful gleam that showed in them when I thought how I had made love one long hot summer with Ralph and never exchanged more than a dozen words at any meeting. But Harry was so clever.

I gave him a gentle push that laid him flat on his back in the sweet-smelling grass again. He smiled at my playfulness but then his eyes darkened with desire as I leaned over on top of him. The muscles in his body tensed in anticipation of a caress … but none came. I put my face close to his throat and pursed my lips but did not kiss him. Instead I blew gently and watched his muscles ripple at the feeling of the tiny cool breaths. In the sudden tense silence I slid down the length of his chest, touching him nowhere but letting him feel my cool blowing in a straight line from his tanned throat to the dimple of his navel and the coarse hairs that pointed like an arrow down to his untied breeches. When the cool promise of my breath stirred the hairs between his straddled legs I reared up and smiled at him. My curls were tumbled, my face flushed, my green eyes gleamed with pleasure — pleasure at the feeling in every inch of my smooth supple body, and in the excitement at this exercise of my natural good power.

‘Never mind worrying, Harry,’ I urged him with my easy sensuality. ‘Just think about what you would like to do now.’

It did not take him long to decide.

At home, Mama was still unwell but she had lost the blueness around her mouth and her breath was coming more easily. One of the under-parlourmaids had confessed to Stride the butler that she had left the stable door open and she was afraid that it had been her fault if a cat had come into the house. Stride had threatened her with dismissal and was waiting for me in the hall before dinner for me to confirm his decision. I was sleepy with pleasure and in a haze of satisfaction.

‘She must go,’ I said. I had almost forgotten that it had been my hand on the latch of Mama’s door. The girl was sent home to Acre village without wages or a character. My mind was too full of my own happiness to contrive better for her.

Stride nodded and summoned us in to dinner. Harry sat at one end of the long polished dining table and I at the other. We glowed like a pair of angels in the candle-light and the room was golden with our happiness.

We talked casually about the land. We spoke of Mama’s health and whether she would like to go to the sea for a few days’ rest or whether it would be good for her to see one of the best doctors in London. Then Stride left fruit and ratafia before me, and cheese and port before Harry and went out, closing the door behind him. We listened to the sound of his steps down the hall to the kitchen quarters, the swish of the door as he pushed through, and then silence. We were alone.

Harry filled his glass to the brim with the plum-coloured wine and raised it to me in a toast.

‘Beatrice,’ he said. I formally raised my glass to him in return, in smiling silence.

We gazed at each other down the length of the table in mutual easy appreciation. There was real pleasure to be had in the formality of the room after our rumpled passion on the downs. It was good to see Harry dressed so elegantly for dinner, so like my papa in my papa’s chair, while I glowed in a gown of deep violet silk.

Harry broke the spell.

‘What of my marriage to Celia?’ he asked. ‘What shall we do?’

I shook myself alert. I had almost forgotten Celia. I was in no mood for planning and thinking; I felt languorous like a stable cat after a rough mating with a scratchy torn. But Harry was right; we had to decide about Celia. And I noted with pleasure that the decision was to be ours: his and mine.

Not again would Mama announce to me something that concerned Wideacre and concerned me. I should be part of that decision. Indeed, the decision would be mine.

‘She has asked me to speak to you,’ I said. Remembering Celia’s fear of Harry’s sexuality I could not keep the smile out of my voice and Harry’s eyes crinkled in amusement as I reported the conversation. ‘Apparently, though she wishes to leave her home and become the Mistress of Wideacre, she does not fully wish to be a wife.’

Harry nodded.

‘Cold, as I thought,’ he said. Like all converts, Harry was an enthusiast. Celia’s virginity was no longer a delightful asset; her frigidity was something he now despised.

‘Is she proposing a bargain where she takes everything and gives nothing in return?’ he asked meanly.

‘She is actually rather afraid,’ I said fairly. ‘It seems that she experienced some rough wooing.’

‘Rough!’ exclaimed Harry. ‘Beatrice, I swear I only kissed her on the lips and held her in my arms. I may have pressed …’ He broke off. ‘But I would hardly call that rough. Would you?’ His reasonable tone of argument died on his lips as he recalled exactly what would seem rough between us and he grinned with remembered pleasure. With one accord we rose from the table and stood side by side at the fireplace looking down at the smouldering logs. In the mirror above the fireplace I could see how the dark violet gown enhanced the colour of my smiling sun-rosy face. How my hazel eyes gleamed more cat-like and satisfied than ever. The sun had placed copper lights in my hair and they gleamed through the light powder. I stood at arm’s length from Harry, teasing myself with his nearness.

‘She would like an arrangement,’ I said.

‘She means this?’ Harry asked incredulously.

‘I believe so,’ I said honestly. ‘She knows Wideacre must have an heir and she’s prepared for that. But I think at heart she’s a cold woman who prefers to be alone. She’s a quiet girl, and shy, and it isn’t hard to guess that her home must be a torment to her. What she wants is the position and peace of Wideacre without having to pay for it more than once in the shape of a son.’

‘How would this suit us, Beatrice?’ Harry asked and my heart warmed at this reassurance that it was my word now at Wideacre. It would be I who decided whether the wedding went ahead or not. Celia could be the pawn I moved on the chessboard of my desires. My mama, too, could be present or absent as I desired. I held the Master of Wideacre in the palm of my hand, and his land, and his power, and his wealth, were mine as they should be.

I shrugged negligently.

‘It is your choice, Harry,’ I said, as if I did not plan to make the decision. ‘You have to marry to come into full ownership of the estate and to take control of the capital from the lawyers. Otherwise we will have to wait until you are of age. It might as well be Celia as any other. The plans have gone ahead and it would be difficult to withdraw. Besides, a wife who does not seek your company too often will make it easy for us to be together.’

Harry glanced up quickly from watching the fire to look at me, tantalizingly out of reach.

‘Do you find me rough, Beatrice?’ he asked thickly.

A denial and reassurance in case he was afraid he had hurt me was on the tip of my tongue, but some wise instinct made me pause. There was some flaw in Harry that mingled pleasure and pain in his mind and that I never would understand. The thought of hurting me was making him breathe a little faster, was making his cheeks flush. I did not dislike it, for his arousal made me shiver inside. Harry’s way would never be my way. Yet I could satisfy him.

‘Yes, you hurt me,’ I breathed.

‘Are you in pain?’ he asked, as taut as an animal ready to spring.

‘I am bruised,’ I said. ‘You hammered my head on the ground and you bit my lips till they bled.’

We were both breathing faster but still I stayed just out of his reach.

‘Were you afraid of me?’ Harry asked.

My eyes met his and I could see our family likeness. Brother and sister, our darkened eyes of desire were the same. In that frozen hot second we were more than siblings, we were like twins.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But I shall have my revenge when I hurt you.’

I had the key to Harry. The statues moved. His arm pinned me to him for a hard biting kiss and his other hand smoothed down the silk of my back and then clenched my buttocks with his fingernails digging in. My mouth opened wide under his and he forced me down on the dining-room floor and took me as roughly as an enemy. One of his hands clasped mine above my head so that I was helpless beneath him, while the other hand pulled up my skirts and petticoats. But when I struggled he instantly released me and checked his inexpert heavy thrusts. But I freed my hands only to hold him closer and guide him inside me.

‘My love,’ I said. Perverse. Wordy. Pompous. He was still the Squire of Wideacre and I wanted him inside me.

‘My love,’ I said.

I slept in my own bed, the first sweet sleep I had had since the death of my father and the crippling of Ralph. My darling Harry had taken from me the dreadful tension and I felt I could rest. Not once in the night did I hear the snap then the thud of a closing mantrap and the sharp crack of breaking bones. Not once did I jerk into wakefulness, thinking I heard a clank outside my door as some hideous cripple clawed into my room, dragging his legs in the mouth of a monstrous trap behind him. Harry had set me free. The golden boy had released me from my darkness, and I no longer ached with pain and fear, nor with longing for those I had loved whom I would never see again.

And their loss now seemed to me to be part of the natural order of things. In farming you have to break the earth and drain ditches to make the land flower and fruit. I had done some breaking; I had ordered a culling. But now the new life was in the earth; there was a new young master, and the proof that I had done right was that the future was very bright and sunny, and that I was safe on the land where I belonged.

I stood before the little mirror on my dressing table and tilted it to see how I must look to Harry. I saw a bruise mouth-shaped on my left breast and I touched it with wondering fingers that I should have been bitten so hard, and yet remembered no pain. In the morning sunshine my skin had the bloom of a ripe peach, ready for picking. From my feet, so white with such high-arched insteps, to the copper curls that framed my face and warmed and tickled the curve of my bare back, I was made for loving. I fell back on the bed, my hair fanned out on the pillow, and craned my neck to see in the mirror how I had appeared to Harry when he took me on grass or on wooden floor, wide-eyed and wide-legged. Watching myself I became luxuriously certain that Harry would soon come to me. It was early; my maid would not call me for an hour; my mother was still safe in her drugged sleep. Harry and I could lie together now and steal off to a hollow in the downs or in the woods after breakfast.

I did not move when I heard the step outside my door but simply turned a lazy head to the opening door and smiled my welcome to Harry. Instead — I jumped as if I had been scalded — there was my mother!

‘Good heavens, child,’ Mama said calmly. ‘You’ll catch your death of cold. Whatever are you doing?’

I held my tongue and blinked lazily at her. The only thing I could do.

‘Have you just woken?’ she asked. I yawned and carelessly reached for my shift.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I must have thrown off my clothes in the night as it was so hot.’ I felt better with my shift on, but underneath my relief I was prickly with irritation — at myself for that guilty start, and at my mother who walked so calmly into my room as if she owned it.

‘How lovely to see you up and about again,’ I said smiling. ‘Are you sure you are well enough? Hadn’t you better go back to your room after breakfast?’

‘Oh, no,’ said Mama as if she never had a day’s illness in her life. She crossed the room, her morning dress rustling, and made herself at home on the window seat.

‘I am feeling so much better! You know how it is with me after these attacks. Once they are over I feel as if I should never be ill again. But you, Beatrice,’ — she narrowed her gaze and looked at me closely as I sat up in bed — ‘you are looking so well, so glowing! Has something pleasant happened?’

I smiled and shrugged my shoulders.

‘Oh, nothing really,’ I said dismissively. ‘Harry took me for a ride on the downs yesterday, and I felt so happy again to be out and about in the lovely weather.’

Mama nodded.

‘You must go out more,’ she said. ‘If we could only spare a lad from the stables it would be all right for him to ride behind you and then you could go out more. But I doubt if there is one to spare with the horses wanted out on the land. Still once Harry is married you will have Celia for company. You can teach her to ride and take her out.’

‘Lovely,’ I said absently and turned the subject. Mama spoke about clothes and said how glad she was to be out of the heavy mourning black we had been wearing.

‘You can have something pretty for Harry’s wedding, but not too bright,’ she said. ‘And while they are away we can plan for a little party to welcome them home and that can be your coming-out party, Beatrice. That way you will be able to make more calls with Celia, and if the Haverings take her to London, you will be able to go too.’

I stopped stock-still in the act of pouring water from my ewer into the basin. ‘Going away?’ I said blankly.

‘Yes,’ said Mama lightly. ‘Celia and Harry are to have one of these new-fangled wedding tours. They are planning to go all the way to France and Italy — did no one mention it to you? Celia wants to sketch and Harry wants to visit some farms he has read about. I should hate such a marathon and, I dare say, so would you. But if the two of them wish to go they may enjoy it. You and I can keep each other company here, my dear. You will be busy overseeing the winter sowing for Harry, I suppose.’

I bent my head over the basin and splashed the cold water in my face, keeping my head down so that Mama could not see me. I reached blindly for a towel. Mama would not be able to tell I could not control a grimace of pain and fear. I buried my face in the towel and held its softness to my eyes where tears of anger and fear were stinging hot. I did not feel unhappy; I felt murderous. I wanted to strike Celia, to smash her pretty face and scratch her soft brown eyes. I wanted Harry to suffer the torments of the damned and crawl to me for forgiveness. I simply could not bear the thought of those two alone together, travelling in a post-chaise and staying at hotels. Dining together without family or friends around them, able to slip away for kisses and caresses any time they wished, while I ached with desire and loneliness and waited for Harry’s return like an old spinster, unwanted at home.

And I was angry, for it had only been last night that I had drawn such pleasure from the knowledge that never again would I be the one whose life was planned for her, whose days were made to revolve around another’s. I was certain that with Harry’s heart in my hands and my secret key to Harry’s sensuality, I should have Wideacre. Now, mere hours after I had lain with Harry on the hard wooden floor, my mama was telling me news as if I was of no more importance than the young daughter of any house.

‘Is this Harry’s idea?’ I asked, coming out of the towel and dressing with my back to Mama in the window seat.

‘He and Celia dreamed it up together when they were always singing Italian songs,’ she said complacently. ‘He thought she would like to hear them sung by Italians or some such nonsense. They won’t be gone long, only two or three months. They will be home for Christmas.’

I gasped, but she did not hear me, and as I turned to brush my hair at the mirror she did not notice that my face was white. All my old pain of longing for a safe arm to hold me and a promise of love I could trust was flooding back over me. It was even worse now I had lain with Harry and knew what it was to be loved by him. I could perhaps live without his loving. Or I could live without being the first person on Wideacre. But I could not live with neither. And I could not bear the prospect of another woman having both the love and the power. If Celia was a beloved wife there was nothing to stand between me and the dominance of my mama. Nothing to save me from the emptiness of dutiful daughter days. Nothing to prevent me from being married off to the first likely suitor who chanced our way. If I lost Harry now, I would lose everything I had ever wanted — my pleasure and land. Just as Ralph had said.

This trip had to be prevented. I knew, because I knew Harry, that if he were all alone with Celia for two months he would come to love her. And who could resist him? I had seen him with a frightened foal or an injured hound, and I knew how he prided himself on his gentle understanding, on winning a shy creature’s confidence. He would see Celia’s coldness as a result of her cruel treatment at home and set himself the task of becoming her friend. Once he came to know her he would realize she was indeed the best bride he could have found.

Under her shy and cool defences, Celia was warm and loving. She even had a little bud of humour, and Harry would learn to make those brown eyes twinkle and he would hear her girl’s ripple of laughter. It would be inevitable that they would warm to each other, and equally inevitable that one night, after the opera or the theatre, or some peaceful dinner for two, Celia would be smiling with wine and new confidence. Harry would turn to her for a kiss and she would give him one. He would touch her breast and she would not push his hand away. He would stroke her narrow pliant back and whisper endearments, and she would smile and twine her arms around his neck. And I? I would be forgotten.

Nothing of these panicky thoughts showed in my face as Mama and I went downstairs, but when we entered the breakfast parlour some hours later I had a second shock of pain at Harry’s delighted greeting to Mama and his warm smile to me was as sunny and open as his delight in seeing her. I drank tea and ate a little toast, while Harry wolfed down cold ham, cold beef, some new bread and honey, some toast and butter and finally a peach. Mama ate heartily too and laughed and joked with Harry as if she had never been ill. Only I sat silent. I was back in my old place at the side of the table rather than at the end. The outsider again.

‘Beatrice looks so well and so happy I think she should have some more riding,’ Mama remarked as Harry carved himself one more slice of meat. He picked at the white fat with his fingers and ate it first. ‘Perhaps you could make a point of seeing she goes out daily,’ Mama said, as if I were a lapdog that needed walking.

‘Rather,’ said Harry unhelpfully.

‘Could she ride today in the morning or in the afternoon?’ she asked. I looked up from my plate and my eyes sent an urgent message to Harry. ‘Now! Now! Say now, and let us race up to the downs and tumble into our little hollow and I will forget this jealousy and pain and give you such pleasure that you will never want to come home and never want another woman in your life.’

Harry smiled at me, his open, brotherly smile.

‘If you don’t mind, Beatrice, I will see to it tomorrow. I promised Lord Havering I would look at his coverts with him today and I dare not be late.’

He took out his watch and pushed back his chair to go.

‘I’ll not be back till late tonight, Mama. I shall stay to dinner if I’m asked. I have not been there for three days and I shall have to make my apologies!’

He bent and kissed her hand and smiled at me in farewell and strolled out of the room as if he had not a care in the world. I heard his footsteps cross the hall, then the front door open and close. In the silence I could hear the clatter of his horse as the groom led it round from the stable and then the clip-clop as he rode away. He rode away as if love and passion meant nothing. He rode away because he was a fool. I had put my heart in the keeping of a fool.

My mama looked at me.

‘You must not mind, Beatrice,’ she said. ‘A young man is bound to be thoughtless of his family when he is engaged to be married. You cannot blame him for preferring Celia’s company to ours. We will all be more settled when this time of waiting is over. I am sure he will find time to ride with you tomorrow.’

I nodded and moved my face muscles into a semblance of a smile.

I held that smile all the long day.

In the afternoon Mama was going calling, but she had enough sympathy with my forlorn state not to force me to go with her. As soon as her carriage had vanished, I took my horse out and rode down to the River Fenny — not near the old cottage where Ralph used to live — but upstream to a deep, clear pool where Harry sometimes tried to catch fish. I tied the horse to a bush and lay face down on the ground.

I did not weep or sob. I lay silent and let the great waves of jealousy and misery wash over me. Harry did not love me as I loved him. Sensuality for him was an occasional pleasure — necessary in that second of desire, but swiftly enjoyed and forgotten. To me it was a way of life, the very kernel of myself. Harry had his outside life: his newspapers, his journals, his books, his men friends, his engagement to Celia and his visits to the Haverings. All I had to dream of, to fill my life, to keep me alive and glowing, was Wideacre. Wideacre and Harry.

And at this moment I had only Wideacre. My cheek lay on the damp, dark leafmould of the forest floor, and when I opened my eyes I could see small, spindly plants with heart-shaped leaves pushing their narrow stems up through the dark peat. Beyond their bowed little heads was the sheen of the Fenny, gleaming like pewter. It flows almost silently here between deep banks, overhung with maidenhair fern and lit by brilliant lanterns of kingcups — as bright above the water as their reflections on the shiny surface.

In the centre of the river one can see two worlds. The reflected world of air and winds, the tossing trees and cloudy sky, and the underworld of the riverbed, a mixture of pure white sand and stones as yellow as gold. In the dark curves of the river where ponds have formed the filtered scraps of peat make the hollows black and ominous, but in the main stream the riverbed glows like sunshine. The bright green weed tossing in the current hides young trout, baby eels and a few salmon. The green ferns at the bank mask the holes of water shrews and otters.

I lay in silence until the thud of my own angry and resentful heart had stilled and until I could hear the safe steady beat of the heart of Wideacre. Deep, deep in the earth, so deep most people never hear it, beats the great heart, steady and true. It spoke to me of endurance and courage. Of setting my heart on the land and staying with the land. Of being full of sin and blood to get thus far, and of other sins which would take me steadily further.

I saw them pass before me without blinking. The death’s head of my father’s agonized face; the scream from Ralph; even the fluttering fall from my window of the owl we had called Canny. Wideacre spoke to me in my loneliness and my longing for love and the beat of its heart said, ‘Trust no one. There is only the land.’ And I remembered Ralph’s advice — which he himself had fatally forgotten — to be the one who is loved. Never to make the mistake of being the one who does the loving.

I listened to that secret beat, that hard wise secret, for a long, long time, until my cheek took the impress of the dead leaves and the front of my grey habit was darkened with the damp of the soil. The chill cooled me and hardened me, like a new-forged weapon of iron. Then I mounted my horse and trotted at a ladylike pace for home.

We dined early for there was no point in waiting for Harry. I poured Mama’s tea for her in the parlour and she told me about her calls and the latest women’s tittle-tattle of the neighbourhood. I took care to nod and look interested. When she rose to go to bed, I threw another log on the fire and said I would stay and read for a few minutes longer. She kissed me goodnight and left. I sat stock-still, like an enchantress in a fairy story, my eyes on the burning log in the grate.

The front door opened quietly. Harry made no noise crossing the hall, thinking the whole house was asleep. He saw the light under the parlour door and came in. I saw at a glance that it was as I had hoped. He had been drinking and was unsatisfied. His walk had a quickness and an alertness. His blue eyes sparkled.

‘Beatrice!’ He said my name as a thirsty man might say, ‘Water!’

I smiled and, more like an enchantress than ever, said nothing, but let the magic of my body and face draw him from the doorway across the room to kneel at my feet before the fire.

‘I felt we should be apart today,’ he said hesitantly, apologetically. ‘I needed to think.’

My face showed no sign of my impatience at his silly lie. Harry think indeed! I knew he had lost his nerve and — afraid of my sensuality, afraid of his own, afraid of the sin, afraid of the consequences — had fled to Celia’s coolness to escape the heat of home. And I knew well enough what had happened there. Celia and her pretty young sisters had petted and teased him all afternoon; Lord Havering’s good wine and generous glasses of port had made him bold again. He had begged a moonlit walk in the garden with Celia and her frightened, struggling refusal of a kiss had set him on fire again with unsatisfied desire and brought him back to my feet. But it was not love with Harry. And it should not be love with me.

‘I hope you did not mind,’ he asked tentatively. He looked up at me and took one still, unresponsive hand. I looked as if I had no idea why I should mind. My hazel eyes fixed on the fire were wide open with detached and polite interest in Harry’s conversation.

‘I was afraid of us as lovers,’ he confessed honestly, his eyes fixed on my face. Still I said nothing. My confidence was growing but I was still chilled inside from my sad vigil in the wood. And I would never love a man who did not love me more.

He fell silent and I let the silence stretch.

‘Beatrice,’ he said again. ‘I will do anything …’

It was a clear plea. I had won.

‘I must go to bed,’ I said, standing. ‘I promised Mama I would not stay up late. We did not expect you back so soon.’

‘Beatrice,’ he said again, looking up at me.

If I had slackened my control and allowed so much as one of my fingers to touch one of the curls of his head, I should have been lost. I would have collapsed to the hearth rug with him and he would have taken me that night and left me the following morning for Celia on a pendulum that would have swung every day of a miserable life. I had to win this struggle with Harry. If once I lost him, I lost not only the love of the one man I wanted, but I also lost Wideacre. I had staked my life’s happiness on this indecisive, conscience-ridden creature and I had to win. Against his own good conscience and against his own good, sweet betrothed, I had set his passionate nature and the taste of perverse pleasure he had with me — my whip on his thigh, the taste of blood when I bit his lips, which he would never have with gentle Celia.

I smiled down at him but took care not to touch him.

‘Goodnight, Harry,’ I said. ‘Perhaps we will ride on the downs together tomorrow.’

I undressed slowly in a dream by candle-light, hardly knowing whether my desperate gamble had won me security or whether I had lost everything. Was Harry even now on his knees at his bedside praying like a good child for God to keep him pure? Or was he still kneeling by my chair in the parlour burning with desire? I slid between the sheets and blew out the candle. In the dark I could hear the house settle in the silence but I lay wakeful, reliving the scene downstairs and aching for my lover. I waited for sleep but I expected to lie awake. My aroused heart beat fast and every muscle in my body quivered in expectation.

In the silence of the night I heard an odd, soft noise and I held my breath to listen. I heard it a second time — the creak of a board in the passage outside my door and then — the most welcome sound in the whole world — a soft sad moan as Harry pressed his forehead to the unyielding wood of my door and kneeled on the floorboards outside my room.

He did not dare to try the handle of the door; he did not dare even to tap on the door to see if I would let him in. He was like a whipped dog in the passageway and knew his master at last. He knelt in longing and in remorse and silence on my threshold. And I let him wait there.

I turned over in bed, smiled in silent delight … and slept like a baby.

My mother teased Harry about the dark shadows under his eyes at breakfast and said she did not know what to blame — Celia’s pretty face or Lord Havering’s port. Harry smiled with an effort and said with careful nonchalance, ‘A morning’s gallop on the downs will soon blow the cobwebs away, Mama! Will you come riding with me today, Beatrice?’

I smiled and said, ‘Yes,’ and his face lightened. I said not another word at breakfast, nor did I speak until we had ridden up past our fields where the corn was ripening to the downs. Harry led the way like a practised lover to our little hollow among the ferns, dismounted and turned to help me.

I kept my seat and looked steadily down until I saw his confidence waver.

‘You promised me a gallop,’ I said lightly.

‘I have been a fool,’ he said. ‘I have been mad, Beatrice, and you must forgive me. Forget yesterday, remember only the day before. Don’t give me that pleasure and then rob me of it. Punish me another way, be as cruel to me as you like but don’t teach me of the loveliness of your body and then take it from me. Don’t condemn me to live in the house with you, to see you every day and yet never be able to hold you again! Don’t condemn me to a living death, Beatrice!’

He stumbled to a halt on what was nearly a sob and as he raised his face I saw his mouth trembling. I reached out to him and let him hold me as I slid down from the saddle. But I freed myself when my feet touched the turf and stepped back so we did not touch. His eyes were hazy blue with desire and I knew mine were dark. The slow, warm heat of arousal was beating in my body and my control over myself and over this scene was slipping fast. My anger at Harry and my conflicting desire to be under him again fused into one passion of love and hatred. With my full force I slapped him as hard as I could on the right cheek and then struck him a violent back-handed blow on his left cheek.

Instinctively, he jerked back and lost his footing over a tussock of grass. I followed, and still guided by wordless anger, kicked him as hard as I could in the ribs. With a great groan of pleasure he doubled up on the grass and kissed the toe of my riding boot. I tore off my dress as he ripped his breeches away and flung myself like a wildcat on him. Both of us screamed as I rode him astride, like a stable lad breaking a stallion. I pounded his chest, his neck and his face with my gloved fists until the climax of pleasure felled me like a pine tree to lie beside him. We lay as still as corpses under our sky for hours. I had won.