The Complete Wideacre Trilogy: Wideacre, The Favoured Child, Meridon. Philippa Gregory

They owned no local land, but they were wealthier. They were an older family, but they had not been in the same house for years as we Laceys. We visited the bishop, whoever the present incumbent might be, of course. We visited two or three other families, but we were friendly only with the de Courceys.

      Although we had now lost Mama’s chilling sense of social gradations, Harry and I had not yet moved out of her chosen circle to make new friends. Partly it was because we lived at such a distance from Chichester as to make a visit there something of an expedition rather than a regular event. But also it was the nature of our Wideacre life. Like Papa we met only the people who lived close to us, or hunted with us, or kin. The roads were often muddy, and in mid-winter utterly impassable. Our work on the land was time-consuming and physically tiring. And, perhaps more than anything else, Harry and I, and now Celia and John too, were an absorbed self-centred little group. Given the choice, I would have been willing never to leave Wideacre for a single day, and while no one loved the place as I did, they all confessed to being content to stay inside the park walls for weeks and months at a time.

      The Haverings were our friends, and the de Courceys. We occasionally had relations of Mama’s to stay, or sometimes some of the Lacey family. But, like many families of our rank, we were a little isolated island amid a sea of poor people. No wonder Mama, who saw those beneath her as an anonymous mass, nearly invisible, had been lonely. No wonder I, catching the slightest hint of threat from those surrounding hundreds, thousands, felt sometimes afraid.

      It was different for town dwellers. The de Courceys’ house stood well back from the road among Scotch firs and was surrounded by a high wall topped with handsome, vicious, metal spikes. When Harry and I drove up there were three carriages already standing on the gravel sweep of the drive and I grimaced at him.

      ‘A tea party,’ I said. ‘Don’t desert me to the old ladies.’

      Harry chuckled and handed me up the shallow flight of steps, while our footman hammered on the door. The de Courceys’ butler escorted us over the black and white marble floor and threw open the parlour door.

      ‘Mrs MacAndrew, Sir Harry Lacey,’ he announced, and Lady de Courcey hurtled towards us from her chair.

      ‘Beatrice! Harry! Darlings!’ she said, and kissed us both soundly on both cheeks. I was slightly taller than her, and had to stoop for her kisses. She always made me feel as if she were too young to have been my mama’s friend. She seemed to me to be eternally the twenty-year-old beauty who had captured the whole of London for a season and then scooped the best suitor on the market, Lord de Courcey. With no money and no family, she had got to this beautiful house and to her wealth on her looks alone. She struck me, with my keen eye for advantage and ownership, as an adventuress. But there was never a hint of that in her behaviour. She was a pattern card of social graces. It was only my view of her, as having gained wealth and position solely by a pretty face, that made her seem to me a clever cheat.

      Now her drawing room was filled with some of the best of Chichester society. Most of the faces we knew, and I was led to make my curtsy to the old tabbies, and to shake the Bishop’s hand. Harry, eyeing a plate of cakes, chatted to Lady de Courcey’s daughter-in-law behind the tea trolley, and to her son Peter, standing by the fire.

      Half a tedious hour we stayed before it was courteous for us to take our leave and then I turned on impulse to Isabel de Courcey and asked her if they would care to dine with us. Peter was keen to come; Lady de Courcey smilingly gave permission; in ten minutes they were ready, and the informal, impromptu invitation excused as part of my impulsive charm.

      Celia was watching for us from the parlour window and came out on the doorstep when she saw the second carriage with the de Courcey arms emblazoned on the door following behind.

      ‘How delightful,’ she said, with her easy sweet manners. But I saw a shadow on her face, and I knew why.

      She had spent all day with John keeping him from alcohol, nerving him for dinner with me, assuring him there would be no wine on the table. Now, dressed for dinner and waiting for him to come downstairs and for us to come home, she discovered with horror that he would be faced with a gay social event, and not the quiet helpful dinner party of a loving family.

      I left the de Courceys with Celia and flicked up the west-wing stairs to change. This evening I had a gown of black taffeta, cut low along the square neck, and I wore a pair of jet ear-rings that dangled low and emphasized the length of my neck. I glanced at myself in my glass as I turned to the door and was well pleased with what I saw. The look of me, the perfect shape, would fill any man with desire. I knew, as surely as I knew where I was going, that to see me so lovely and to hate me so much, every night of his life, would destroy John MacAndrew.

      He had gone through a stage when, fired with drink, he could attack me. He had gone through a stage when he needed a drink to face the sight of me. Now he discovered that the drink that had been his support, that had kept him alive through the nightmare of the recent months, was no help to him at all. He saw now why there had always been a bottle placed by his bedside, always a glass on his morning tray. He saw now that the bottle in the study, in the library, in the gun room, was no accident. That I had ordered it so. And he learned now, slowly, that he had two enemies and they were allied. One enemy was the woman he had loved. And the other was the drink he could not now refuse. He feared he was near defeat. He could feel himself falling. He could not bear his life, filled as it was, with loss. No child, no wife, no work, no pride, no affection from any source except Celia. And she was pouring her love to help him in a reform he feared he could not sustain. He feared also that failure.

      I smiled to myself and saw how my mirror showed a woman so radiant that you would think I was still a bride on my wedding day. Then I sped down the stairs, the taffeta billowing behind me. Stride was in the hall, loitering for me.

      I smiled at him with my quick awareness.

      ‘I know,’ I said, half laughing. ‘But we really cannot expect the de Courceys to drink lemonade. Serve sherry in the parlour and wine in the dining room. We will have the best claret with the meal, and I think, champagne with the fruit. The gentlemen will have port as usual.’

      ‘Is Mr MacAndrew’s glass to be filled?’ Stride asked, his voice neutral.

      I showed no flicker of my awareness that Stride, and thus the rest of the household staff, had ceased to call my husband ‘Doctor’. He would be ‘Mr MacAndrew’ to them now for the rest of his life, and they would hear no reprimand from me.

      ‘Of course,’ I said, and passed Stride and went into the parlour.

      They were all there. John had himself well under control and Celia’s eyes were on him full of love. Harry was looking around for the sherry decanter as Stride brought it in, and he poured with a liberal hand for the de Courceys, for me, and for himself. Celia took a glass of lemonade, and John held the pale yellow drink in his hand, untouched. I could see his head was up, turned towards Harry, and with my keen instinct, I knew he was scenting the air, smelling the perfume of the sherry, warm in the firelight.