The Lady Tree. Christie Dickason

At last. This is it. She flung herself back onto her pillows to recover from the enormity of the idea. I shall wake up like this every morning from now on. No more shifting. I have finally begun the rest of my life.

      Her new husband Harry lay in the next chamber in his own bed, where she meant him to stay for quite some time.

      ‘Husband,’ she repeated quietly to the embroidered blue silk of the canopy. ‘Husband.’ Testing it. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut and shook her head in pleased disbelief. What a difference that word made. She was exactly the same girl as before, but because she had a husband her life had changed around her more than she could yet imagine. People already treated her differently.

      ‘My lady.’

      Firmly, she set aside the memory of Mistress Margaret’s tight eyes and bared teeth. And of Harry’s glares across the dinner table.

      I did it! she thought fiercely. I did it. Somehow, in spite of my uncle…I wanted it hard enough…All I had to do was want something hard enough and not care whether it was correct, or dutiful, or virtuous.

      A spasm of anxiety curled her onto her side.

      Selfish and wilful as it is, I mustn’t care what my uncle and aunt think!

      For fourteen years she had tried to please by being good, but had found that she could never be good enough, nor be good in all the different ways different people wanted. She had been dutiful and loving to her parents, but they had deserted her when she was eight for the superior joys of Heaven. She had then tried to please the assorted relatives who took her in. (An allowance from her inherited estate more than covered the expense of feeding and boarding her.)

      She soon grew confused. No sooner had she figured out the rules in one household (both spoken and unspoken) than she was shifted to another where she had to begin again. One aunt (on the Puritan side of the family) had valued quiet, self-effacing children, another (a socially ambitious beauty) preferred spirit. One uncle insisted on prayers four times a day, while another ranted against self-congratulating piety and self-serving humbug. Several cousins had taunted her for being thin and pinched and ugly, while her cousin Chloe, whom she thought quite beautiful, was jealous of Zeal’s red-gold wiry hair, blue eyes and fine pale skin.

      As for Mistress Hazelton…Zeal curled a little tighter. Mistress Hazelton watched her with a curious little distant smile, no matter what she did. In the four years since her uncle Samuel Hazelton had bought her wardship, Zeal had tried not to worry about what she might be doing wrong, and not to see that Mistress Hazelton pinched her lips every time she spoke to her.

      Her uncle only made things worse when he defended her. He let his wife see that he was amused by Zeal’s desire to learn Latin and by her questions about his business affairs (which were also her business affairs, as he had bought the use of her fortune along with her wardship). By the time, two years ago, that her uncle sent her to the boarding school in Hackney to improve her deportment, dancing and needlework, Zeal was worn out by trying.

      I have anchored myself at last, she thought. When I have made myself the mistress, I will be able to choose my own way to be good or bad. Whether this place is good or bad, I shall make the best of it with a whole heart.

      Outside the diamond-paned windows, the pale green tops of trees caught the morning sun. She uncurled and stretched again. The worn linen sheets slid smoothly against her skin. She spread her small pink toes like a cat stretching its paws and turned her head in the yielding welcome of the feather pillows. She now recognized the odd noise outside. It was the constant faint bleating of sheep.

      Lady Beester. What a fuss everyone made about a title. It had even clamped a muzzle on Mistress Hazelton, for all her pious lip-curling at the lewd antics of the gentry. Again, Zeal smiled at the underside of the blue silk tester of her bed. What mattered was that Sir Harry Beester was her Harry.

      He had appeared like a miracle, a very gentil parfait knight, and rescued her from the baying pack that had sniffed after her moderate fortune. Tall, handsome Harry, golden as Apollo, and kind. A little simple at times, but after six and a half years of being parcelled about, Zeal gave kindness its full weight in assaying the human soul.

      Harry was also amusing. Though already twenty-two, he sometimes seemed her own age or younger. He did not scorn practical jokes or an occasional nostalgic game of hide-and-seek. He had never stuck his hand down her bodice to tweak her nipples, nor shoved his tongue into her mouth as other suitors had done. Most important of all, he had said that he quite understood how much having a child frightened her. He was in no rush for an heir. They could leave all that business until she was ready. He had sworn it in a solemn oath to her. In spite of her uncle’s dark objections that Harry was a fortune-hunter like all the others, Zeal felt she had made a good trade for her money.

      She lay in the shadows of the huge bed, breathing softly, warm with a child’s first adult taste of the power of its own will. Harry would never regret his bargain either. She would be the most useful wife a man could want. She knew that he was disappointed in her as a social ornament, but she would startle him by how well she would manage Hawkridge House.

      She eyed the unfamiliar objects of her chosen world and prepared to annex them. The pewter basin and jug on the table. A mirror. The end of a heavy carved oak coffer. The faded velvet-covered cushions on the bench fixed below the nearest window. The silvery-green trees outside.

      She heard voices outside her windows as well as the bleating sheep. Her inventory of her new world suddenly leaped in length. Her peaceful warmth faded.

      If I am going to be such a useful wife, I’d better make a start, she thought wryly.

      She pushed down the quilted coverlet, slid across the acre of linen and lowered herself to the floor. Shivering, she looked around for a smock or robe. Her breath made a faint cloud in the chilly air. The rooms on the north side of the house were never warm in the morning until June.

      Naked and on bare feet, she crossed to the window and peeked out. The paths of busy dairymaids, washing women, dogs, grooms, and chickens already criss-crossed the basse-court yard below. Harry’s cousin John strode purposefully across one corner of the courtyard, head down like a dog on an exciting scent. Mistress Margaret’s voice called through an open window.

      A cold lump formed in Zeal’s stomach. The weight of her new world landed hard on her chest. She put her right foot on top of her left, to try to warm it.

      All those people expect me to tell them what to do.

      She remembered Mistress Margaret’s pinhole pupils and tight lips as she had welcomed Zeal to Hawkridge House.

      She knows the house, knows exactly what to do and say here, and she’ll be waiting for my mistakes.

      Zeal lifted the lid of the carved oak coffer. It was nearly empty except for some linen scraps. No clothes. Goose-pimples prickled her forearms, standing the fine gold down on end.

      Do I have a maid to dress me here or do I dress myself, as at the school?

      At the Hazeltons’ her woman Rachel had slept on a truckle bed in her room. Here she was alone. She dropped the lid of the coffer.

      Has everyone already breakfasted? Do they eat in the dining chamber or their own rooms? How can I go call Rachel when I’m stark naked?

      She put her left foot on top of her right.

      I’m cold. And Mistress Margaret hates me. And I irritated Harry at dinner last night, our first in our new home.

      She had felt skewered by glares at the table – Harry’s, Mistress Margaret’s and her aunt’s. There had been nowhere safe to look. Not even at Harry’s cousin, John Graffham, who had seemed so friendly when the coaches first arrived but then ignored her all through dinner.

      She wrapped her arms across her full pink-nippled breasts. Both feet were now numb.

      How did I think last night that I could manage all these people? I shall pay for my presumption. I’ll be punished for insisting on my own way. I’ll never figure out what is right and wrong here. I’ll never