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

‘No’ but somehow the word would not come. I simply could not bring myself to spoil this lovely sunny day. The waves splashed and sucked at the shingle; the seagulls called and wheeled in the salty air. The words of refusal seemed a million miles away, even though I knew I could not possibly accept.

      ‘Is it Wideacre?’ he asked as the silence lengthened. I looked up quickly in gratitude at his understanding.

      ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I could live nowhere else. I simply could not.’

      He smiled gently, but his blue eyes showed hurt.

      ‘Not even to make a home with me and be my wife?’ he asked. The silence lengthened, and it seemed that I would indeed be forced to frame some sort of absolute refusal.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I truly am. Wideacre has been my life, all my life. I cannot begin to tell you what it means to me. I cannot go away from it.’

      He reached across the rug and took my hand in both of his. He held it gently, and then turned it palm up and pressed a kiss into the warm, cupped hand, and then he closed my slim fingers over the kiss as if to hold it in.

      ‘Beatrice, know this,’ he said, and his voice was very grave. ‘I have seen you, and watched you for a year now and I knew you would be likely to refuse me and to choose instead to stay at home. But hear this: Wideacre belongs to Harry and after him to his heirs. It will never, it can never, be yours. It is your brother’s home; it is not your home. If you and he should quarrel – I know, I know, how impossible that seems – but if he insisted, he could throw you off tomorrow. You are there only at Harry’s invitation. You have no rights at all. If you refuse marriage for Wideacre then you are refusing your future home for a place that is only a temporary place to stay – it can never be either secure or permanent.’

      ‘I know,’ I said, low. My eyes were on the sea and my face was stony. ‘It is as secure as I can make it,’ I said.

      ‘Beatrice, it is a special place, a wonderful place. But you have seen very little of the rest of the country. There are other places equally lovely where you and I could make a home of our own, that would become as dear to you as Wideacre is now,’ he said.

      I shook my head and glanced at him.

      ‘You do not understand. It could only ever be Wideacre,’ I said. ‘You do not know what I have done to try to win it, to make a place for myself there. I have longed for it all my life.’

      His clever eyes were on my face. ‘What you have done?’ he said, repeating my indiscreet words. ‘What have you done to try to win it that commits you so deeply?’

      I hovered between a collapse into a heart-easing conscience-saving confession to this wise, this gentle, lover and a clever, habitual lie. My instincts and my hungry cleverness warned me away, away from confidence, away from trust, away from love, away from real marriage.

      ‘Beatrice …’ he said. ‘You can tell me.’

      I paused, the words were on my tongue. I was about to tell him. Then I glanced down towards the sea and saw a man, bronzed as a pirate, looking curiously at us.

      ‘It seems I was right about your silver sugar tongs,’ I said lightly. John followed the direction of my gaze and exclaimed and started to his feet. Without hesitation he went towards the fellow, his boots scrunching on the shingle. I saw them exchange a few words, and then John glanced uncertainly back at me, and came back towards me with the man following a few steps behind.

      ‘He recognizes you as Miss Lacey of Wideacre,’ John said, rather bewildered. ‘And he wants to speak with you about something, but he will not tell me what it is. Shall I send the fellow about his business?’

      ‘No, of course not!’ I said smiling. ‘He may be about to tell me where to find buried treasure! You count the spoons and repack the tea things and I will see what he wants.’

      I rose to my feet and went towards the man who pulled his forelock as I approached. I could tell he was a sailing man; he had none of the heaviness of a farming labourer. His skin was tanned a deep dirty brown, and his eyes narrowed with staring over bright waters. He had a pair of flapping trousers, wide-bottomed, and shoes – not boots like a farm labourer would. He wore a handkerchief tied over his head with a characteristic little plait of hair poking out behind. A complete villain, I judged, and I had a wary smile for him.

      ‘What d’you want of me?’ I said, certain it was a loan or some favour.

      ‘Business,’ he said, surprisingly. ‘Trade.’

      His accent was not local and I could not place it. West country, I thought. I started to have a glimmer of an idea what his business might be.

      ‘Trade?’ I said sharply. ‘We farm, we don’t trade.’

      ‘Free trade, I should have said,’ he said, watching my face. I could not control the flicker of a smile.

      ‘What d’you want?’ I said briskly. ‘I’ve no time to waste talking to rogues. You can speak to me briefly but we don’t break the law on Wideacre.’

      He grinned at me without a flicker of shame. ‘No, miss,’ he said. ‘Of course not. But you have good cheap tea and sugar and brandy.’

      I grinned ruefully at him. ‘What d’you want?’ I said again.

      ‘We’ve trouble at the place where we usually store our goods,’ he said in an undertone, keeping a wary eye on John MacAndrew, waiting alert by the curricle. ‘We’ve got a new leader and he suggested storing in the old mill on your land. The goods would be there only a few nights each run, and you need know nothing about it, Miss Lacey. There’d be a couple of kegs left behind for you if you would be gracious enough to accept them, or perhaps some fine French silks. You’d be doing the Gentlemen a favour, Miss Lacey, and we never forget our friends.’

      I could not look severe at the cheeky rogue and there was nothing unusual in what he was asking. The smugglers – the Gentlemen as they were called – had always come and gone up the hidden deep-banked lanes of Sussex, and the two Preventive Officers, whose job it was to control smuggling along the whole long, inlet-ridden coast, spent their nights snug in bed and their days writing reports. One of them was a professional poet and had been given the job to provide him with time to write. So in Sussex we had the joint benefits of duty-free spirits and fine poetry, an excellent, if comical, result of the muddle over the excise laws, and the gifting of government jobs to deserving young gentlemen.

      Papa had permitted smuggled goods in out of the way barns and had turned a blind eye to occasional reports of half-a-dozen horses passing quietly down the lane through Acre late in the night; Acre village itself would keep curtains drawn and mouths shut. The Gentlemen were generous to their friends but they would find and kill a tale-bearer.

      So there was very little reason why they should not store goods on our land and the permission was on my lips, but the mention of the old mill and the new leader made me curious.

      ‘Who is this new leader you have?’ I said.

      The man winked. ‘Least said, soonest mended,’ he said discreetly. ‘But he’s a fine planner and good man to follow. When I see his black horse at the head of the ponies I feel at ease.’

      My mouth was suddenly dry. I swallowed with difficulty.

      ‘Did he choose the old mill as a store?’ I said. My voice was a thread and I could feel sweat making my face clammy.

      The man looked curiously into my face, which was suddenly white.

      ‘He did, miss,’ he said. ‘Are you ill?’

      I put my hand to my eyes and found my trembling fingers were wet with sweat.

      ‘It is nothing, nothing,’ I said desperately. ‘Is he a local man then?’

      ‘I think he was born and bred near Wideacre,’ said the man, impatient with my questions and worried at the way my hands were trembling and how my eyes had gone dark. ‘What