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

ceremoniously open by the butler and, gawping out of the parlour window, as Dr MacAndrew handed me up, were Celia, Nurse and, of course, Baby Julia.

      ‘You’ve had a fine send-off this morning,’ he said teasingly, noting the flush of scarlet on my cheeks.

      ‘It’s more usual to wait until you are accepted before you make an announcement,’ I said acidly, my scene of maidenly refusal forgotten in my irritation.

      He choked with laughter at my indiscretion.

      ‘Now, Beatrice, try for a little tone,’ he implored, and for all the world I could not check a laugh in response. But this was no way to lead up to a refusal – and besides all the house staff had piled out on to the terrace to see us go, and could see me driving away with my suitor with a smile on my face.

      We swept down the drive at a spanking pace. He was driving his matched bays and they were fresh and going well. Although he held them to a trot on the twists and turns, I was looking forward to feeling the speed when we reached the road to Acre. The lodge gates were waiting for us opened wide, and Sarah Hodgett was there with a curtsy and a meaningful smile for me. I glanced accusingly at John MacAndrew’s profile as all the Hodgett family crowded out of the house to point and wave at pretty Miss Beatrice and her young man. John MacAndrew turned his head and grinned at me, unrepentant.

      ‘Not me, I swear it, Beatrice. So don’t look daggers at me. I said not a word to anyone save your brother. I imagine the whole world has seen how I look at you, and how you smile at me, and has been waiting for us while you and I are taken by surprise.’

      I considered this in silence. I disliked the easy tone of confidence but I was interested in whether I was surprised at the proposal. I had been amazed at the day of the race, but I was even more disbelieving of my own behaviour now. Sitting up high on the box of his racing curricle, with a laugh trembling all the time on my lips and no words of refusal anywhere in my mind.

      That I should refuse to leave Wideacre was, of course, self-evident. But I could hardly refuse him before he proposed, and every second the assumption that I would accept him, and even the impression that I had accepted him, seemed to be growing. John MacAndrew had been clever enough to let the proposal of marriage become an understood thing between us without chancing a refusal.

      As we came out of the drive and into the lane he turned, not as I had expected towards Acre but right towards the crossroads where our lane meets the main road between London and Chichester.

      ‘Where do you imagine we are going?’ I inquired drily.

      ‘For a drive, as I told you,’ he said lightly. ‘I have a fancy to see the sea.’

      ‘The sea!’ I gasped. ‘Mama will have a fit. I told her I should be back for dinner. I am sorry, Dr MacAndrew, but you will have to go shrimping alone.’

      ‘Oh, no,’ he said coolly. ‘I told your mama we would be back after tea. So she will not expect us earlier. She agrees with me that too much desk work is bad for young women.’

      I gasped again at this further evidence of John MacAndrew’s tactical flair. ‘Is my health suffering very badly?’ I asked sarcastically.

      ‘Indeed, yes,’ he said without hesitation. ‘You are becoming round-shouldered.’

      I choked down a laugh – and then laughed out loud.

      ‘Dr MacAndrew, you are a complete hand, and I will have nothing to do with you,’ I declared. ‘You may have kidnapped me today, but I shall be more careful of you another time.’

      ‘Oh, Beatrice,’ he said, and he turned his face from the road to smile very tenderly towards me, ‘Beatrice, you are so very clever, and so very, very silly.’

      That left me with nothing to say. But I found I was smiling into his eyes, and my colour was rising.

      ‘Now,’ he said, dropping his hands and letting the pair break into a smooth fast canter, ‘now we are going to have a lovely day.’

      Indeed we did. His housekeeper had packed a picnic that a lord might have envied, and we dined at the top of the downs with all Sussex at our feet and God’s clear sky above us. My extraordinary performance of the night before dropped from my mind as if it had never happened and I revelled in the relaxation of being neither goddess nor witch but simply a pretty girl on a sunny day. After Harry’s frenzied worship, it was restful not to have to pretend, not to have to dominate. John MacAndrew’s smile was warm, but his eyes were appraising and quick. I should never have him grovelling at my feet in a wet heap of remorse and lust. I smiled at him in easy approval and he smiled back. Then we packed up the picnic gear and drove on.

      We reached the sea at teatime. He had chosen the stretch of shoreline nearest to Wideacre – almost due south – where there is a tiny fishing village of half-a-dozen shanties and a most villainous-looking public house. We pulled up outside and John MacAndrew’s shout brought the landlord running, very surprised and very certain he had nothing in his house fit for the Quality. So, too, were we. But in the boot of the curricle was a complete tea service with the best tea, sugar and cream.

      ‘I dare say it will be butter by now,’ said John MacAndrew, spreading a rug on the shingle of the beach for me to sit. ‘But a simple country girl like yourself does not expect everything to be perfect when she condescends to leave her estate and visit the peasantry.’

      ‘Indeed not,’ I retorted. ‘And you will not know the difference, for I dare say you tasted neither butter nor cream until you crossed the border.’

      ‘Och, no,’ he said instantly, adopting the broadest Scots accent. ‘All we drink at home is the usquebaugh!’

      ‘Usquebaugh!’ I exclaimed. ‘What is that?’

      His face darkened with some private thought. ‘It’s a drink,’ he said shortly. ‘A spirit, like grog or brandy, but a good deal stronger. It’s a wonderful drink for losing your senses with, and a good many of my countrymen use it to forget their sorrows. But it’s a poor master to have. I’ve known men, one of them very dear to me, ruined by it.’

      ‘Do you ever drink it?’ I asked, intrigued at this serious side to John MacAndrew that I had glimpsed before only in his professional work.

      He grimaced. ‘I drink it in Scotland,’ he said. ‘There’s many places where you can get nothing else. My father serves it at home instead of port in the evening, and I cannot say I refuse it! But I fear it rather.’ He paused and looked at me uncertainly, as if considering whether or not to trust me with a secret. He took a breath and went on. ‘When my mother died I had just started at the university,’ he said quietly. ‘The loss of her hit me hard, very hard indeed. I found that when I drank usquebaugh – whisky – the pain left me. Then I found it good to drink all the time. I think it is possible to be addicted to it – as I warned you some people become addicted to laudanum. I fear addiction for my patients because I’ve had a taste of it in my own life. I’ll take a glass of whisky with my father, but I’ll take no more. It is a weakness of mine I do well to guard against.’

      I nodded, understanding only dimly what he meant, but knowing well that he had trusted me with some sort of confession. Then the landlord came out from the public house carrying, with awestruck concentration, John MacAndrew’s silver tea service, the silver pot filled to the brim with perfectly brewed Indian tea.

      ‘I shall expect to be attacked by highwaymen on the way home, all after your sugar tongs,’ I said lightly. ‘Do you always travel with such vulgar ostentation?’

      ‘Only when I am proposing,’ he said so unexpectedly that I jumped and some of my tea spilled in the saucer and splashed my gown.

      ‘You should be horse-whipped!’ I said, dabbing at the stain.

      ‘No, no,’ he said, teasing me even further. ‘You misunderstand the nature of my proposal. I am even prepared to marry you.’

      I choked on a laugh and he rescued my teacup and put it on the tray behind him.

      ‘Now