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

could be, and more, God knows, but this must not stand in your way. With your life and happiness taking you away to Scotland, Wideacre is the last thing you should have on your mind.’

      If I had not been in such a blind rage that made me want to shriek and weep I should have laughed aloud. The idea of my life taking me to some pretentious town house in Edinburgh or my love for some sandy-haired stranger taking me from Wideacre was comically funny – if it had not been stark horror. All horror.

      ‘Who knows of this plan?’ I said, fiercely. ‘Mama?’

      ‘No one, except myself,’ Harry said, hastily. ‘I spoke first of all to you, of course, Beatrice. But I believe I may have mentioned it to Celia.’ His half-smile revealed that my future exile had been the topic of some marital chit-chat in the master bed.

      ‘But I had no idea, Celia had no idea, that you would be anything but deeply, deeply happy, Beatrice.’

      His voice, so controlled, so soothing, so much the chocolate smooth voice of powerful men who marry, and bed, and dispose of women down the long centuries, while women wait and wait for land, snapped the remainder of my control.

      ‘Come with me,’ I ordered, and grabbed a candelabra from the dining table. Harry exclaimed, looked around for rescue and seeing none followed me. In the hall we could see the parlour door ajar and hear Mama and Celia’s gentle voices as they sewed the altar cloth. I ignored it and turned to the great sweep of shallow stairs, Harry following, bemused but obedient. I led him up the first, then the second flight, then up the narrow stairs where my candles were the only dipping, flickering light.

      We reached the locked door to the west-wing store room.

      ‘Now wait,’ I said and unlocked the door with the key from my pocket and left him standing outside without even a light. In haste I slid from my evening gown into the green riding habit I had worn as a girl when Harry had first come home from school and caught me, on that hot afternoon, naked on the floor of the old mill barn. The long line of buttons down the close-fitting jacket I left open from throat to navel. I was naked underneath. In my hand I held Papa’s old hunting whip – a long black thong of leather coiled wickedly and efficiently, the handle black ebony with silver inlay.

      ‘Come in,’ I said in a voice Harry would not dare to disobey.

      He pushed open the door and gasped as he saw me, tall and angry in the flickering light of the candles. He gasped again when he took in the deep shadow down the front of my gown, and the saddle rack, and the hooks on the wall, and the sensuously cushioned divan and the scatter of thick sheepskin rugs.

      ‘Come here,’ I said. My tone cut him like a knife. In a trance he followed me to the hooks on the wall and when I tapped his legs with the crop he straddled so I could tie both ankles with the leather thongs. Speechless he spread his arms out while I tied him by the wrists – tightly and painfully – to the hooks.

      One hard pull and his fine linen shirt was ripped to the waist and he flinched and stood half naked before me. With my bare hand I double-slapped him across the face; left-right-left-right and then, like a stable cat, I scratched his chest from his throat to the belt of his breeches with the sharp fingernails of both claw-like hands. He slumped on his bindings and groaned. It sounded as if he were really hurt. I was filled with deep gladness.

      I took Papa’s old hunting knife and slit the seams of Harry’s fine embroidered evening breeches so they hung in tatters from his waist. The blade had nicked his skin on one thigh and when I saw the welling drop of blood I kneeled and sucked it as hungrily as any vampire. If I could have bled every ounce of his male pride and his folly and his power from him, I would have done so. He groaned, then straightened up again, straining against the ties as if he wanted to be free. I stepped backwards and with one expert flick uncoiled the whip so the thong squirmed on the floor towards him like a snake ready to strike. Then I raised it.

      ‘Understand this, Harry,’ I said, and my voice was clear with hatred. ‘I am never, in all my life, leaving Wideacre. I am never, in all my life, leaving you. We are together for ever. While you are the Squire of Wideacre you have me as surely as you have the land. You forgot that, and that is why I am going to punish you. I shall punish you in such a way that you will never forget and it will be a drug and a longing to you which you will never rid yourself of.’

      Harry gasped as if to speak, to beg against the sentence, or to beg for it. I neither knew nor cared. I raised my arm and cracked the whip.

      Papa had taught me how to handle a whip in the stable yard when I was ten. With skill and practice you can pick a strawberry without bruising it, or break the hide of a bull. I used Papa’s whip to slap Harry hard on the tender skin under the arms and down the flanks of his sweaty, trembling body, and then to tease and caress him around the throat, down his panting chest and barely to graze him between his straddled legs.

      ‘Go to the rack,’ I ordered. I untied him and he fell in a heap at my feet as soon as I loosened his wrists. I kicked his ribs without hesitation in one abrupt uncaring move. ‘Go to the saddle rack,’ I repeated.

      He fell on it as if it was his schoolboy bed, and laid his cheek on the smooth polished wood while I tied each wrist and ankle to one of the legs. Then I played the whip over his back and his buttocks and his thighs, so each touch was the lightest sting, but the repetition added to discomfort, then pain, and then to pink, stinging grazes.

      I untied him again and he slid from the rack into a crumpled heap on the floor and put out one imploring hand to the hem of my skirt.

      I loosened the skirt of the riding habit at the waist and dropped it beside him. His hand closed convulsively on the soft velvet and he buried his face it in with a half-sob. But I left on the short tailored jacket and my soft leather riding boots.

      ‘On your back,’ I said mercilessly.

      Harry was far gone. He lay like a stranded whale, beached on a shingle spit of unnatural desire. Out of element, out of place, helpless and heaving; I dropped like a scavenging eagle on the burstingly hard shaft of his body and as he entered me he screamed one hoarse shriek of pleasure. His back arched as he pushed up to greet me, and the sore spots on his shoulders and ribs scraped against the bare floorboards and rubbed on the fleece rug. I stayed cool and detached in my mind, but somewhere in the depth of my body some unimportant private crisis of pleasure mounted and was satisfied. The clenching of my muscles as I took my way tipped Harry over the border of his ecstasy of pain and I felt his whole body shudder. His wriggles underneath my hard control became faster and more frenzied, then I saw his eyelashes close on his tear-stained cheeks and his mouth opened to give a great groan of release and pleasure. At that exact second I abruptly straightened up and lifted myself off him. And I slapped his rigid manhood with an open palm as if I was slamming an ill-trained dog to the floor. Harry gave a shriek of incredulous pain at the blow, and I saw that one of my rings had cut the delicate, bursting skin. A fountain of seed and blood, unwanted, rejected, spilled over his scratched, whipped belly, and he gave three great choking sobs of release and loss. I watched him bleed like a hurt virgin, my face as kindly as frozen marble.

      I could hardly get up next day, I was so tired. The emotional strain, the great shuddery sexual tension and the effort of dominating and brutalizing Harry had worn me out. I took breakfast very late in my room, sitting up in my wide white bed, and then spent the rest of the morning at my desk at the sunny window of my office. I was supposed to be doing the accounts, but little work was done that day. In truth, I spent the time gazing unseeing out of the window with the picture of Harry’s agony and Harry’s agonized ecstasy before my eyes.

      At midday the parlourmaid brought me some of the strong black coffee we had shipped home from France. On the silver tray was an extra cup, and Harry entered the room behind her. I must confess, he took me by surprise. I had hardly thought he would have the courage to assert himself, and so soon. He walked rather stiffly, but not so badly that anyone would notice who was not watching him like a newly trained sparrowhawk.

      The maid poured the coffee and put mine on the desk by my hand, and then left us alone. I said nothing. My tiredness had vanished and I was as wary as a poacher – seeking gain and yet rigid with