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

The common was open to all – even the poaching was a ritual game played with little malice. But Harry’s way would mean the common enclosed, the footpaths shut, the cow and pig without grazing. The poor would become poorer. And the very poorest of them would drop through the old traditional supports – and they would starve.

      But the end of the road was security for my son. The end of this road was his inheritance. I would have ridden roughshod over every mother in the land – Mary, Joseph, and Baby Jesus too, if necessary – to get my son in the Squire’s chair.

      ‘It has to be,’ I said. ‘I see that.’

      ‘That’s generous of you!’ said Harry enthusiastically. ‘I know how you love the old ways, Beatrice, and they have served us well. It is generous of you to be ready to give them up, and all for little Julia’s sake, too.’

      ‘Yes,’ I said. I settled back on the couch and wrapped a silk shawl around my naked shoulders. The touch of the cloth was soft on my skin and warm. As I shrugged at the thought of the cottagers who would be homeless and hungry the folds slipped, and Harry leaned forward to kiss one bare shoulder. I smiled at him. He had to go further yet, this night.

      ‘But it still would not be enough,’ Harry said. ‘To buy out the heir we would have to offer a massive sum of capital. We could start a fund certainly. But we would be unlikely to make enough money quickly enough.’

      ‘I know,’ I nodded. ‘It has to be the MacAndrew money.’

      Harry frowned. He was slow but he was not stupid.

      ‘John would hardly agree,’ he objected. ‘It is to secure Julia’s future certainly, and I hope that while she lived and ruled Wideacre there would always be a home for the three of you, but there is no reason why John should put his private fortune into a scheme that gains him or his child nothing.’

      I smiled. One always had to take things so slowly with Harry. But he generally got there in the end.

      ‘Unless we could find some way of making Richard and Julia joint heirs,’ I suggested tentatively. ‘They could run Wideacre as we do, you and I, together. Everyone can see how well that works, perhaps they too could learn to work together.’

      Harry smiled, and traced a line of kisses from the sweet round of my shoulder along the clear line of my neck and up to behind my ear.

      ‘Well, yes, Beatrice,’ he said softly. ‘But you and I have a rather special way of deciding business matters.’

      ‘They could be partners,’ I murmured, lazily, as if I could think of nothing but the rising warmth and pleasure of his kisses. I lay back on the couch, the shawl falling from my nakedness, my eyelids half closed, and my eyes behind them as sharp as green glass.

      Harry’s movement to kiss a new line, from the fascinating bones at the base of my neck down between my warm tumbled breasts, was arrested at that thought.

      ‘Julia and Richard?’ he said in sudden surprise.

      ‘Yes,’ I said, pushing his face down to my soft belly, still slack from the birth of my son. ‘Why not?’

      Harry kissed me, absently, his mind turning over this seed of an idea that could secure Julia the benefit of inheriting one of the sweetest estates in Sussex, which would keep Wideacre in his line.

      ‘You know, Beatrice,’ he said. ‘That’s a rather good idea. If John would accept a half-share of the estate as a return for loaning the capital to buy out Charles Lacey and change the entail we could arrange a contract to make them joint heirs.’

      ‘That is wonderful,’ I said, catching his enthusiasm as if I had not been planning this ever since I had recognized myself in little Julia, and felt Richard’s rights to the land as sharply as I felt my own.

      ‘How wonderful, Harry, if our two children could rule here after we are gone!’

      Harry beamed. ‘To give Julia Wideacre would be worth almost any sacrifice,’ he said tenderly. ‘And to give your son an equal share in our home makes me almost as happy, Beatrice.’

      ‘You are so right, Harry,’ I said, as if I were congratulating him on his idea. ‘We should set it in train at once, don’t you think?’

      Harry rolled towards me in his enthusiasm, and I lay back and readied myself to pay my dues. I could enjoy Harry; when I was full of fear or anxiety, I could even feel a need for him. But once my first easy lust was satisfied I wanted, more than any other pleasure, the delight of being in my own, solitary bed. But Harry was exhilarated at the exercise of his wit upon the problem of the entail, and I wanted him abed and tired and happy tonight, for there would be more to plan in the morning; I wanted him too tired to talk with Celia when he crept in beside her sleeping warmth.

      ‘Come to my office in the morning, and we will write to the London lawyers,’ I said, and sighed as if the pleasure of his kisses were too much for me. ‘Oh, Harry,’ I said, as if overwhelmed. ‘After breakfast, tomorrow.’

      After Harry left me I had sat for two or three long hours gazing into the red embers, puzzling in my mind, giving myself this time like a gift. I was giving myself a chance to draw back. The next steps before me were like the first steps one takes on the crest of the downs where they slope so steeply that even the grass cannot grow. You take one step, then another, and then the height of the slope catches you and you cannot, cannot stop. And there would be no way of stopping the course I was on. And there would be no laughter at the speed and fright of it.

      So I gave myself a few minutes to linger at the top and consider what I was doing. Just a couple of quiet hours beside the fire to test my own determination and to see if I could bear what I was about to do. I had to break the land, break it to pay for that entail. Hammer the earth and the people, and the rhythm of the seasons, until it yielded gold like blood to pay for this daredevil scheme.

      You never farm for today. You always think of next season, next year, or the year beyond. You plant wheat for your own profit, but you plant trees for your heir. I was planting trees. I was planning fifty years ahead. I could not pour love and money and care into the land for some damned cousin; it had to be for my bone and my seed.

      Whatever the cost.

      It was as I had planned. After a night spent lovemaking with me, Harry had tumbled into bed beside his silent, sleeping wife, and barely exchanged more than a dozen words with her until we were all seated around the breakfast table in the warm June sunlight. Celia, dressed in a simple black gown trimmed with black lace, looked as lovely as a young woman who has enjoyed twelve hours’ sleep can look on a midsummer morning. Beside her I dare say I looked tired. I know I felt it. I was smiling, for everything that had seemed in conspiracy against me was flowing easily and sweetly my way again. I took a cup of French coffee from Celia with a word of thanks, and a slice of ham from the sideboard. Then the door opened and my husband came in.

      He walked with a light and easy step as if he had not been drunk last night, and dead drunk every night for the last twelve. He smiled at Celia’s clear prettiness with real affection, and then his face turned to me and the smile became a sneer.

      ‘My lovely wife,’ he said, and his words were bitten off as if even speaking to me left a sour taste in his mouth.

      ‘Good morning,’ I said evenly, and took my place at the foot of the table.

      ‘Beatrice, I shall come to your office this morning to discuss that matter we mentioned last night,’ said Harry pompously, but I wished he had stayed silent.

      ‘Last night?’ John asked, his eyes on his plate. ‘Something you three talked over together?’

      Celia was unruffled behind the silver coffee set. ‘No, these two were up all hours talking profit and loss as usual,’ she said. ‘You know how they are when they are planning for Wideacre, John.’

      John shot a hard look at her under his sandy eyebrows.

      ‘I know how these two are together,’ he said briefly.

      There