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

I could feel wet mud caking in spots all over my face. My hat had tumbled off somewhere and a stable lad would have to search for it tomorrow. My hair had come unpinned during the wild ride and was a tangle of chestnut curls over my shoulders. Tobermory was creamy with sweat, his bright coat bathed in it. Sea Fern was shuddering with panting breaths. Dr MacAndrew’s fair skin was scarlet with heat and excitement and his eyes – winner’s eyes – were sparkling blue.

      ‘What is your forfeit, then?’ I gasped, as soon as I could draw breath. ‘You rode like a demon for it. What is it that you want so badly?’

      He slid from his saddle and reached up to me to lift me down. I slid into his arms and felt my face crimson, fuelled by the breathless excitement of the race and the smell of our hot trembly bodies, and the pleasure of a man’s arms around me again.

      ‘I claim your glove,’ he said. But he said it with an emphasis that stopped my incredulous laughter and made me look at him intently.

      ‘First the glove,’ he said, stripping the scarlet kid gauntlet from my hand, ‘and later, Miss Lacey, your hand in marriage.’

      I caught my breath on a cry of outrage but he coolly pocketed the forfeit as if men proposed to ladies in this way every day of the year. And before I could say anything, Harry and the whole pack of them were tumbling into earshot and I could say nothing.

      There was nothing, in any case, that I wanted to say. While I retired to change my gown, wash my face and pin my hair, I wasted no time in planning a reply. His cool tone made it clear that none was required. I stood in no danger of breaking my heart over a man who owned no land, least of all someone who would neither inherit nor buy Wideacre. If this young, enchanting doctor ever proposed he would find himself gently, kindly refused. But in the meantime … I twisted the hair nearest my face into ringlets around my fingers and chuckled with unrestrained laughter … in the meantime, it was all delightful, and I must hurry or I would be late for tea.

      It might have meant nothing more to me than a light-hearted jest but the race made the young doctor an accepted member of our family circle. Although Mama never spoke, I knew she regarded him as her future son-in-law and his presence in the house freed her from her persistent, unacknowledged fears. So it was a happy summer for all of us. Harry’s worries about the land were lifted once he saw it back under my confident control and knew he could rely on me to protect him from errors of ignorance with either the precious fields or the people. The vines were doing well despite the strange English soil, and it was a triumph of Harry’s experimental enthusiasm over my love for the old ways that I was happy to concede. Whether we would have enough sun to turn the little buds of grapes into fat, sweet, green fruit was something not even Harry’s confidence could guarantee. But it was a fair chance and one worth taking, which might produce a new crop and even a new product for Wideacre.

      Mama was happy in Harry’s smiles and in my settled contentment. But her main role was that of doting grandmother. I realized only now how much her tenderness must have been constrained by my hurtful independence, and by the convention of leaving children out of reach in the nursery. Under the loving, indulgent regime of Celia, the little angel was never banished, except for meals and bedtime. She was never left to cry alone in the darkness of the nursery. She was never abandoned to the absent-minded care of servants. Little Julia’s life was one long banquet of cuddles and kisses and games and songs from either her adoring papa, her loving mama, or her equally besotted grandmama. And seeing the glow of happiness in my mother’s face and the gurgles of delight that came from the cradle, one would need a heart of stone not to see that the love that flowed between them all was a blessing indeed.

      I missed her. I was not one of those women whose hip is empty unless they have a child astride it, God knows, but little Julia seemed to me to be a special child. No, more than that. She was the bone of my bone in a way I could not fathom. I could see the glint of my russet in her hair; I could see my easy happy delight in Wideacre in her gurgles when she was left outside in the cradle. She was my child through and through and I missed her when I knew that Celia’s eyes were sharp upon me, and that I was not allowed either to raise her from her cradle or play with her, and not – emphatically not – to take her out on the land and give her a little taste, the smallest of tastes, of a proper Wideacre childhood.

      As for Celia, she seemed in a haze of happiness. The baby consumed her time and attention and she had developed almost miraculous powers of sensitivity where Julia was concerned. She would excuse herself from the table to go to the nursery when no one but her had heard the faintest cry. The whole upper floor of the house seemed to murmur with lullabies that summer as Celia sang to the baby, and moved around the baby’s room in a continual hum of melodic half-laughter. Under Celia’s tentative and diffident prompting, one room after another was redecorated and cleaned and the heavy old furniture of my father and grandfather was replaced with the light fragile styles of the fashion. More profit to me, who snapped up the rejected wooden chests and tables for the increasingly cluttered west wing, but no damage to the house, which gleamed with a new lightness.

      Celia delighted Mama with her enthusiasm for ladylike pursuits. They worked like scullery maids over a new altar cloth for the church, first designing, then drawing, then stitching. I did a few odd running stitches in the evening in the sections where mistakes would not show, but every day Mama and Celia had the great swathe of material stretched between them and had their heads bent in pious bondage.

      When they were not stitching they were reading aloud as if addicted to their own voices, or ordering the carriage to give Baby a little airing, or paying calls, or picking the flowers, or practising songs, or all the old time-wasting, energy-consuming, pretty little activities that compose a lady’s life. Why should I complain? They were happy tripping around on the little treadwheel of meaningless duties, and Celia’s devotion to her sewing, to her house and to her mama-in-law freed me from many a weary hour in the small parlour.

      Celia’s girlish diffidence and her ready acceptance of second, nay, fourth place in the household, meant that she never clashed with Mama. She had already learned in France that her wishes and wants would always come second to mine and Harry’s, and indeed she never seemed to expect anything else. Now, far from being a confident young wife in her first home, she was more like a courteous guest, or a poor relation allowed to live with the family in return for unremitting civility and little chores. On no area of my power – not the keys and the accounts of the cellar, nor the kitchen, the store rooms and the servants’ wages – did she ever encroach. No area of power of Mama’s – the selection and training of the indoor staff, the planning of the menus, the decisions about cleaning and care of the house – did she ever threaten. She had been trained hard, Celia. She would never forget the unwelcoming neglect she had met at Havering Hall, and she expected little better of her new home.

      With such poor expectations, she was agreeably surprised. Mama was ready to defend her rights against the interloper, but she found that Celia asked for nothing, took nothing, expected nothing. The only time she ever whispered so much as a tentative suggestion was when Harry’s convenience and comfort would benefit, and then she had a ready ally in Harry’s doting mama, who welcomed any information about her darling boy’s preferences.

      And Stride, who was an experienced butler and knew Quality when he saw it, would nod his head and advise her. The other servants followed his lead and showed her proper respect. No one would ever fear Celia. But everyone loved her. Her willingness to accept whatever standards or behaviour Harry, Mama or I saw fit made all our lives easier for her sunny presence in the house.

      And I, too, was happy. In the morning I generally rode out to see the fields or check the fences, or up to the downs to see the sheep. In the afternoon I did the accounts, wrote letters of business and saw whoever had waited patiently in the lobby room by the side entrance. Before I dressed for dinner I would stroll out with Harry in the rose garden, in the growing shrubbery, or perhaps as far as the Fenny, talking business and gossip. In the evening I would sit opposite Celia on Harry’s right hand and dine like a princess on the wonderful food that had come to Wideacre with the new cook.

      After dinner, Celia would play and sing to us, or Harry would read, or Harry and I would talk low-voiced in the window seat while Celia and Mama played duets on the piano or tackled