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

would have asked me what I thought. Then I would have praised Ralph to the skies, for I adored him. Now I was not so sure. He had my brother in utter thrall, and my ears had pricked up at the mention of their wrestling bouts. It sounded like Staveley all over again. And for some reason, I could not have said why, I feared the idea of Ralph having such a hold on Harry’s impulsive heart.

      ‘I need someone to check the sheep today,’ said Papa, looking down the table with his eyes equally on Harry and me.

      ‘I’ll go,’ said Harry, ‘but I must be done by dinner. Ralph has found a kestrel’s nest and I am going after it this afternoon before the hen lays a second brood.’

      ‘I’ll go,’ I said. ‘They’ll need to be checked for foot rot and you will not recognize the signs, Harry.’

      Papa beamed, unconscious of the latent jealousy in my voice.

      ‘It seems I have two bailiffs then!’ he said, pleased. ‘What d’you say, ma’am?’

      Mama smiled, too. At last everything was falling into what she saw as its proper place. Only I was still intractable.

      ‘Harry should go,’ she said sweetly. ‘I need Beatrice to cut some flowers this morning, and this afternoon she may come with me and pay some calls.’

      My eyes flew to Papa’s face in an instinctive, silent appeal. But he was not looking at me. Now his son was home our easy, loving comradeship had taken second place. He was watching Harry learning his way around the land with as much love and interest as he had shown when he had been teaching me. There was pride as well as love in his eyes when he looked at his tall, golden son. He saw Harry growing, broadening and developing from the milksop mother’s boy into a young man. And he saw in him the future Master of Wideacre.

      ‘Harry can go then,’ he said with careless cruelty. ‘I’ll ride out with you, Harry, and show you what foot rot looks like. If Beatrice is right and you do not know, then it’s high time you learned. Wideacre is not all play, you know!’

      ‘I wanted to ride today,’ I said, my voice small and my face mutinous.

      Papa looked at me and he laughed as if my disappointment and pain were funny.

      ‘Ah, Beatrice!’ he said with casual, worthless affection. ‘You must learn to be a young lady now. I have taught you all I know on the land. Your mama must teach you all you need to know in the house. Then you can rule your husband in and out of doors!’ He laughed again and Mama’s little tinkling laugh told me I had been beaten.

      Harry learned to spot foot rot from Papa and he also used the time to persuade Papa that Ralph and Meg should be rehoused. When I heard him mention it at tea, I could not keep a still tongue in my head.

      ‘Nonsense,’ I exclaimed. ‘Ralph and Meg do very well in their little cottage. It’s practically rent-free as it is, and Meg is a sluttish housekeeper. The straw roof is blowing away because Ralph is too lazy to glean straw to rethatch it and Meg is too idle to care. They’ve no call to be rehoused. Meg would not know what to do with a good house.’

      My father nodded his agreement, but he looked to Harry. The way his eyes strayed from me cut me to the bone. He was looking at his successor, his heir, measuring his judgement. My opinion as the daughter of the house might be right or wrong, it hardly mattered. But Harry’s judgement mattered very much, for on him the future would depend. He was the male heir.

      Papa had not ceased to love me. I knew that. But I had lost his attention. He had broken the thread of our constant companionship that had held me ever since he first took my pony on a leading rein and that had kept my mare to his horse’s shoulder ever after. Now there was another horse riding beside my papa: the future Squire’s.

      I might ride my mare, or practise the piano, or paint little pictures, it hardly mattered. I was the daughter of the house. I was just passing through. My future lay elsewhere.

      And while Harry had Papa’s ear, Ralph had Harry’s. And if I knew Ralph he would use that influence for his own ends. Only I could see clearly into Ralph’s mind. Only I knew the longing for the land. Only I knew how it felt to be an outsider in your own home, on your own land. Forever longing to belong and to be secure. Forever denied.

      ‘Ralph’s a first-rate man,’ Harry said firmly. He had lost most of his quiet diffidence but still had his gentle voice and manners. He was openly disagreeing with me, without a thought in the world that I might be irritated or angry. ‘It would be a shame to lose him and there are many landlords who would pay him more and house him better, too. I think he should have the Tyacke cottage when the old man dies. It’s a handy cottage and near to the coverts.’

      I nearly exploded with anger at my brother’s stupidity. ‘Nonsense! Tyacke’s cottage is worth £150 a year and the entry fee to a new tenant is £100. We can’t throw money like that away on Ralph’s convenience. We could repair his old cottage or move him into a small cottage in the village, but the Tyacke cottage is out of the question. Why, it’s practically a house! What would Ralph or Meg want with a front parlour – they’d only use it to keep the pheasant chicks in.’

      My mother, stone-deaf to the discussion, heard only the tone of my voice and it roused her from her habitual indifference.

      ‘Beatrice, decorum,’ she said automatically. ‘And don’t interfere with business, dear.’

      I ignored the caution, but my father nodded at me to be silent.

      ‘I’ll consider it, Harry,’ he said. ‘Ralph is a good man, you’re right. I’ll look into it. He’s reliable with pheasants and foxes and we need to keep him on the estate. Beatrice is right that the Tyacke property is a handsome cottage, but Ralph does need something more than that shack by the stream. Full of ideas Ralph is. Why, he’s even got one of those mantraps for the woods. He knows his job and he works hard. I’ll consider it.’

      My brother nodded and smiled at me. There was no malice or triumph in his smile. His friendship with Ralph had brought him a new confidence but no arrogance. His smile was still that of a cherubic schoolboy, his eyes still the clear blue of a happy child.

      ‘He will be pleased,’ he said serenely.

      I realized then that this was Ralph’s idea, Ralph’s arguments, Ralph’s very words. He had given me pleasure and possessed me, but he held my brother in the palm of his hand. Through my brother he could influence my father and I knew, because I knew Ralph, that he was after more than the pretty little Tyacke cottage to rent. He was after land, and then more land. More to the point, he was after our land. Few people ever move more than five miles from the village where they are born. Ralph was born on Wideacre land; he would die here. If he wanted land, it was our land he was after. The cottage was just a first step for him and I could not imagine where his hunger would end. I understood it as clearly as I understood myself. I would have done anything, committed any crime, any sin, to own our fields and woods. With a growing fear I wondered if Ralph also had the same desire, and how my besotted brother would ever stand against him.

      I excused myself from the table and slipped out to the stables, ignoring my mother’s murmured instructions. I needed to see Ralph, no longer as a lover needs to see the man she loves, but to see if I could feel in him the passion for the land that he had seen in me. If he wanted Wideacre as much as I wanted it – the serene and lovely house, the warm gardens, the folds of the hills and the rich, peaty earth with the silver traces of sand – then my family was lost. Harry’s enthusiasm would admit a cuckoo that would throw us mercilessly to one side and claim the golden kingdom for himself. My mare trotted swiftly down the track to the cottage that was suddenly not good enough for Ralph, and then shied, nearly unseating me, as a bush near the path swayed and rustled.

      ‘Ralph!’ I said. ‘You nearly had me off!’

      He grinned. ‘You should ride on a tighter rein, Beatrice.’

      I turned the head of my horse and urged her forward so I could see what Ralph was doing. He was pegging out the jaws of a huge mantrap, a vicious weapon, on to the ground. It yawned like a great clam, custom-made