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

he said, and his voice was a sigh of exhaustion and obsession.

      It was as if all the candles in my heart had been lit at once. I had him. I had him safe again. I need never again fear for my place at Wideacre. I had won the Squire to corruption and I had him tight in my net.

      ‘You treat me as if you hate me, but you don’t hate me, do you, Beatrice?’ His voice had a hint of a beggar’s whine. I guessed that this was the voice my clever Ralph would recognize. The voice the schoolboy Harry had learned at school when the hero Staveley had taught his little troop to fetch and carry and fag and fight for him. The voice Staveley had taught him to use when he begged for bullying, or beating, or little treats of reward. If I had known Staveley, or even if I had Ralph to advise me, I should have known better at this moment what I should do – whether to indulge or punish Harry some more. I awaited some clue.

      ‘I was wrong, I have been all wrong,’ said Harry like a whipped spaniel puppy. ‘But do not beat me again, Beatrice. I shall do better. I shall never offend you again.’

      Harry, the Squire of Wideacre, as a whimpering child, made my skin crawl with revulsion. With a sudden stab of memory I remembered the disdain in Ralph’s bright black eyes when Harry knelt on the floor of the dusty barn and laid his cheek on Ralph’s bare foot. Of course Ralph had looked relieved that we should, so miraculously, escape discovery. But he also looked as I imagined I looked now, as if Harry were some obscene mistake of nature, like a three-headed calf. I saw before me the long years of running the Squire as a puling baby – and I longed for Ralph’s uncomplicated, dominating fresh lust.

      ‘You disgust me,’ I said, speaking the truth, which leaped unstoppable to my lips.

      Harry gave a whimper and slid from the pretty salon chair to his knees on the carpet at my feet.

      ‘I know it. I know I do,’ he said miserably. ‘I cannot help it. I am bewitched, I think. I have been wrong all my life. Only you can save me, Beatrice – though it is you who have done the bewitching. I am caught in your snare and I am helpless before you. For God’s sake be merciful with me.’

      I smiled, the easy cruel smile of this new role Harry had cast for me in his fevered, oversexed, over educated imagination.

      ‘You are mine for ever, Harry,’ I said. ‘Your rumblings with your little bride, your friendships with men, your love for Mama or your work on the land – none of these are the real life. The real life is with me in secret, in a private locked room that only you and I know about. And you will get to that room only when I bid you, for only I have the key. And there I will take you into pain and beyond pain. And we will never, ever part; for I do not wish to go, and you –’ I smiled down into his upturned white face – ‘you would die without this pleasure.’

      He gave a sob and buried his face in my skirt. I touched his head with my hand as gently as our mama would have done and heard his sobs renew at my tenderness. Then I gripped on to the long blond curls and pulled his head up so I could look into his eyes.

      ‘Are you my servant?’ I demanded in a whisper like a shard of ice.

      ‘Yes,’ he said tonelessly. ‘Yes.’

      ‘Are you my slave?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Then go now for I have had enough of you.’

      I said it cruelly, and I turned back to my desk. He shuffled to his feet and walked slowly and painfully to the door. His hand was on the doorknob when I said, in the voice I use to call my dogs, ‘Harry!’

      He turned quickly and awaited my pleasure.

      ‘You will behave at dinner as if nothing at all had ever happened,’ I said. ‘This is a life and death secret and your silly open face must not betray you, or you will be ruined. Do it, Harry.’

      He nodded, like a pauper taking orders at the workhouse, and turned to leave.

      ‘And Harry,’ I said with a new, languorous note in my voice, little more than a whisper.

      I could see his back tense like a shudder, and he turned again.

      ‘I will unlock the door of my secret room tonight, and you may come to me at midnight,’ I said, softly.

      He shot me a look of speechless gratitude. Then I let him go.

      I was still left with the problem of John MacAndrew and, to tell the truth, the problem of my pleasure in his company, which I was loath to lose unless I had to. One solution was obvious: an easy lie. That Harry had quite misunderstood me, and that I enjoyed his friendship but I feared we would not suit as a married couple. I sat, musing, facing my desk with the papers I should be checking piled under a heavy glass paperweight – a deep red poppy embalmed inside it. I played the scene over in my mind – my dignified regret at rejecting John MacAndrew – and I tried some of the phrases of maidenly modesty in my mind. But my serious face kept breaking into a smile. It was all such fustian! And clever, sharp John MacAndrew would see through it in a trice. I had to find some lie to turn him from his course of marriage to me, and my exile to Scotland. But I would never convince him that I liked him only as a friend when he could see, as everyone could see, that I had a quick smile as soon as I saw him, and that no one could amuse me as he did.

      I did not ache for him as I had for Harry. I did not see him with my conscious mind suspended utterly by the power of my body’s feelings as I had with Ralph. But I could not help smiling when I thought of him and the idea of his kisses delighted me. Not in my dreams – for I never, ever dreamed of him – but in daytime reveries and in the pictures that came into my mind before I slept.

      While I was still turning over in my mind what I could say to him, I heard the noise of a curricle and pair and Dr MacAndrew’s expensive carriage bowled up the drive and stopped, informally, impertinently, outside my window. He looked down from the high box-seat and smiled at me. I crossed to the window and flung it wide to him.

      ‘Good morning, Miss Lacey,’ he said. ‘I have come to kidnap you from your business. It is too lovely a day to waste indoors. Come for a drive with me.’

      I hesitated. To refuse would be ungracious and would only delay the proposal if his mind was set on marriage. Besides, now the window was open I could smell the hot end-of-summer scents of full-blown roses and gillyflowers and stocks. In the woods, pigeons were cooing their hearts out and the swallows were swinging and swooping in the air in their last picnic before their travels. We could drive around to watch them breaking the turf in the rested fields to ready them for sowing.

      ‘I’ll fetch my hat,’ I said with a smile, and I swept from the room.

      But I had not considered Mama. She met me at the great staircase, and insisted that I change into a pretty walking-out dress and not clatter about the country in my morning gown. While I fretted at the delay, Mama called her maid as well as mine and laid out a choice of gowns before me on the bed.

      ‘Any one, any one of them,’ I said. ‘I am only going for a drive to the fields with Dr MacAndrew, Mama. I’m not off to London for the season, you know.’

      ‘There is no reason why you should not look your best,’ Mama said with unusual force. And she chose for me a deep green gown, smart jacket and voluminous skirt, which would bring out the green in my eyes and show my clear honey skin to perfection. The little matching bonnet had a veil of green lace, which I complained gave me spots before my eyes but actually delighted me with the way it hinted at the brightness of my eyes and drew attention to my smiling mouth. Mama’s own dresser piled up my hair in fat coils and Mama herself pinned on the hat and pulled down the veil. Then she took both my gloved hands in her own and kissed me.

      ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘You look lovely. I am very, very happy for you.’

      Not only Mama seemed to think I was off to hear a proposal. Half the household had found a job to do on the staircase or in the hall that morning, as I made my way down to the front stairs. Every one of them bobbed a curtsy or tipped a bow to me and they smiled as if the whole of Wideacre was in a conspiracy to see