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

kiss off-centre on my mouth and looked over my shoulder.

      ‘Beatrice,’ he said. And then looked back to my face. ‘Thank you, indeed I do thank you for bringing them home, for bringing both of them home.’

      Then he gently, oh so gently, set me aside with an unconscious push and walked past me – the woman he adored – to Celia. To Celia and my child he went, and put his arms around both of them.

      ‘Oh, my dearest,’ I heard him say softly, for her ears alone. Then he plunged his face under her bonnet and kissed her, oblivious of the smiling sailors, of the crowd on the harbour wall, oblivious, too, of my eyes boring into his back.

      One long kiss and his eyes were bright with love, fixed on her face and his whole face was warm with tenderness. He turned to the baby in her arms.

      ‘And this is our little girl,’ he said. His voice was full of surprise and delight. He took her gently from Celia and held the little body so the wobbly head was level with his face.

      ‘Good morning, Miss Julia,’ he said in a tender play. ‘And welcome home to your own country.’ He broke off and said aside to Celia, ‘Why, she is the image of Papa! A true Lacey! Don’t you think so? A very true-bred heir, my darling!’ And he smiled at her and, tucking the baby securely in the crook of his elbow, freed one hand so he could take her little hand and kiss it.

      Jealousy, amazement and horror had first of all nailed me silent to the rail, but I found my tongue at last to break up this affecting scene.

      ‘We must get the bags,’ I said abruptly.

      ‘Oh, yes,’ said Harry, not shifting his gaze from Celia’s deliriously crimsoning face.

      ‘Will you fetch the porters?’ I said, as politely as I could.

      ‘Oh, yes,’ said Harry, not moving an inch.

      ‘Celia will want to greet Mama and show her the baby,’ I said skilfully and watched Celia’s immediate guilty jump and scurry to the gangplank with the child.

      ‘Not like that,’ I said impatiently, and called the nurse to carry the baby, straightened Celia’s bonnet and shawl, handed her her reticule and went with them, in a dignified procession, ashore.

      Mama was as bad as Harry. She hardly saw Celia or me. Her arms were out for the baby and her eyes were fixed on its perfect little face, framed in the circle of pleats of the bonnet.

      ‘What an exquisite child,’ Mama said, her breath a coo of pleasure. ‘Hello, Miss Julia. Hello. Welcome to your home, at last.’

      Celia and I exchanged knowing glances. Celia might be baby-struck but she had walked all night with the child almost every night since the birth. We maintained a respectful silence while Mama cooed and the baby gurgled in reply, while Mama inspected the tiny perfect fingers and held the satin-slippered feet with love. She raised her head at last and acknowledged us both with a warm smile.

      ‘Oh, my dears, I can hardly tell you what pleasure it gives me to see you both!’ As she said the words her eyes cleared of her passion for the baby and I saw some shadow pass over their pale blueness. She looked quickly, sharply, even suspiciously from Celia’s open flower-like face to my lovely lying one.

      I felt suddenly, superstitiously afraid. Afraid of her knowledge, of her awareness. She knew the smell of birth, and I still bled in secret, a strange, sweet-smelling flow that I feared she could sense. She could not know; yet as she looked so hard at me I felt half naked, as if she was noting the new plumpness of my neck, of my breasts, of my arms. As if she could see beneath my gown the tight swaddling around my breasts. As if she could smell, despite my constant meticulous bathing, the sweet smell of leaking milk. She looked into my eyes … and she knew. In a brief exchange of silent looks she knew. She saw, I swear she saw, a woman who had shared a woman’s pains and pleasure, who had, like her, given birth to a child; who knew, like her, the pain and the work and the triumph of pushing out, into the uninterested world, a magical new life that you have made. Then she looked hard at Celia and saw a girl, a virginal pretty girl, quite unchanged from the shy bride. Virtually untouched.

      She knew, I could sense it. But her mind recoiled. She could not put the knowledge into her conventional frightened mind that her instincts were telling her as clear as a ringing bell. Her eyes saw my plumpness and Celia’s strained thinness. Her senses smelted the milk on me; her own motherhood recognized that mark on me: a woman who has given birth, who has taken her part in the creation of life, and her eyes slid from me to Celia.

      ‘How tired you must be, my dear,’ she said. ‘Such a long journey after such an experience. Sit down and we will soon be home.’ Celia had a kiss and a seat beside Mama in the carriage, and then Mama turned to me.

      ‘My dearest,’ she said, and the fear and unspeakable suspicion in her eyes had gone. She was too weak, she was too much of a coward to face anything unpleasant; the secret horror of her life would always escape her. ‘Welcome home, Beatrice,’ she said, and she leaned forward and kissed me, and held my plump fertile body in her arms. ‘It is good to see you again, and looking so well.’

      Then Harry joined us and he and I loaded the failing wet-nurse into Mama’s carriage, and watched the luggage and the servants into the second chaise.

      ‘How well you have managed,’ said Harry gratefully. ‘If I had known when I left you … But I never should have gone at all if I had not known that you would manage, my dearest Beatrice, whatever happened.’

      He took my hand and kissed it, but it was the cool kiss of a grateful brother and not the warm caress he had given to Celia. I scanned his face, searching for a clue to his change towards me.

      ‘You know I would always do anything to please you, Harry,’ I said ambiguously, the heat still in my body.

      ‘Oh, yes,’ he said equably. ‘But any man would feel the care of his child, his very own child, to be something special, so precious, Beatrice.’

      I smiled then. I could see into his heart. Harry, like Celia, was baby-struck. It would be a tedious period while it lasted but they would grow out of it. I very much doubted if Harry’s infatuation would last the length of the journey home, cooped up in a carriage with a squalling, underfed, travelsick baby, an inexperienced mother and a foreign nurse.

      But I was wrong.

      It lasted the long journey. Their passion for the baby proved so demanding that the journey took long extra hours while the coach dawdled at walking speed behind Harry and Celia who believed the infant’s travelsickness would be relieved by a walk in the fresh air. I strolled ahead. Mama stayed, imperturbable, in the coach.

      Despite my rising irritation with Harry, I could be angry with no one when I walked in the lanes of Wideacre with the great chestnut trees showering crimson and white petals on my head from their fat candle flowers. The grass grew so green – so brilliant a green it made you thirsty for the rain that had made it that astonishing colour. Every hedge was bright with greenness, every north-facing tree trunk was shadowed with the deep wet greenness of moss or the grey of fat lichen. The land was as wet as a sponge. All along the hedgerows there were the pale faces of the dogroses and the white flowers of the blackberry bushes. In the better cottages, vegetables were thriving and flowers edging the garden paths made even the smallest houses look bright and prosperous. The grass, the pathways, even the walls were speckled with summer flowers growing with irresistible joy in the cracks and crannies.

      Yes, Harry and I had a score to settle. No man would walk past me to another woman and not regret it, but on that long, slow journey home I felt, as I felt for the rest of the summer, that I first had to come home to Wideacre; that Harry was the least important issue in this homecoming. That Harry and I could wait until I had met the land again.

      Come home I did! I swear not a cottage on our estate but I banged on the door and pushed it open and smiled, and took a cup of ale or milk. There was not one house but I inquired after children, and checked profits with the men. Not one new hayrick did I miss, not one springing field with the soil so rich and wet did I neglect. Not even the seagulls