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

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