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

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