The Favoured Child Read online

  Richard, sunny-tempered Richard, smiled his angelic smile at his papa and said, ‘I am sorry, sir. I dare say I should have worked harder. My cousin puts me to shame, I know. She has always been quick-witted.’

  His words were a reprieve for me, for I had feared he would be offended by the comparison. Uncle John smiled at Richard’s generosity as he got in the coach and waved goodbye to us all and left for London.

  But Richard’s sunny humour lasted only until the coach was out of sight. As soon as it had gone, he announced he was going to do some studying in the parlour. At once I turned back to go into the house with him.

  ‘Not with you,’ he said roughly. ‘You will chatter and distract me. Go and sit with your mama. You heard what Papa said, he wants me to work harder. I will never get on if you are always wanting to talk to me or for me to come out for a walk with you.’

  ‘Richard!’ I said amazed. ‘I was only coming to help you with your work.’

  ‘I don’t need your help,’ he said untruthfully. ? fine pickle I should be in if I depended on your understanding. Go and sit in the parlour with your mama, Julia. I am working hard to please my papa.’

  I went without another word, but I thought him unjust. And I knew that it would take him twice as long without me to look up the words for him. I said nothing to Mama about that low-voiced exchange, but after I had finished some darning for her, I asked if I might go to the kitchen and make some of Richard’s favourite bon-bons as a reward for him for his sudden application to his studies. At dinner I had a little dish of creams for him, and then I had his thanks in one of his sunny smiles and a careless hug outside the door of my room at bedtime. I went to bed warmed by that smile and happy to be restored to his good graces. And I felt I had learned once again that a lady’s way is to return hard words with a smile, until everything is at peace again. It always works. Provided you can smile for long enough.

  We heard nothing from John for three long days, but on Friday morning, looming out of a miserable unseasonal mist, his carriage came quietly up the drive. Mama and I dropped our sewing to the floor in the parlour and tumbled out down the garden path to greet him. Uncle John swung down from the carriage and caught my mama up to him for a great hug and a smacking kiss which could have been heard on the coast.

  ‘Celia!’ he said, and they beamed at each other as if nothing more needed saying.

  Uncle John gave me a smile and a quick wink over my mama’s head. ‘And Miss Julia too!’ he said with pleasure. ‘But let’s get in! You two will freeze out here in this beastly weather. It has been foggy all morning. I stopped at Petersfield last night-simply could not see my way further forward! Otherwise I should have been with you yesterday!’

  Mama ushered him into the parlour and rang the bell for more logs for the fire and hot coffee. Uncle John held his thin hands to the blaze and shivered a little.

  ‘I thought I was home for summer!’ he complained. ‘This is as damp as an Indian monsoon.’

  ‘Julia, go and fetch your uncle’s quilted jacket,’ Mama asked me. ‘And perhaps a glass of brandy, John?’

  I ran to his bedroom at the top of the house for his jacket, then to the kitchen to tell Stride about the brandy and when I came back, Mama had him settled in a chair drawn up to the blaze and the colour was back in his cheeks.

  ‘Where’s Richard?’ he asked as Mama poured coffee and Stride heaped more logs on the fire.

  ‘At his lessons,’ Mama said. ‘He has been studying like a scholarship boy ever since you left! Do remember to praise him, John. He took your reproof to heart.’

  ‘Shall I go and fetch him?’ I asked. ‘Sometimes he stays late, but I know he would want to come home if he knew Uncle John was back.’

  ‘Yes,’ said John. ‘Do! For I have some rough drawings for the rebuilding of the hall with me and I can hardly wait to show them to you all. And that’s not all!’ he said, turning to my mama. ‘We have an estate manager! I dropped him off at the village before coming here. You may meet him as you walk through, Julia. His name is Mr Megson, Ralph Megson.’

  There was a noise in my head like a crystal glass splitting, and then I heard a sweet high humming, which seemed to come from the very trees of Wideacre Park as they leaned towards the house. The mist seemed to be singing to me, the hills hidden in the greyness seemed to be calling. I shook my head to clear my ears, but I could still hear the sound. A sweet high singing like a thousand leaves budding.

  ‘That’s very quick!’ said my mama, impressed. ‘However have you managed so well?’

  ‘Skill and efficiency,’ Uncle John said promptly; and Mama laughed. ‘Pure luck, actually,’ he confessed. ‘I had placed an advertisement and I had two replies, but the bad reputation of Wideacre is still very much alive, I am afraid, and no suitable agent seemed likely to appear. I had just decided on the one who seemed the least likely to cause difficulties when a message was sent up to my room that another man had come for the job.

  ‘In he came,’ Uncle John said, smiling, ‘and proceeded to interview me as to my plans for Wideacre. When I had passed what seemed to be a series of tests by assuring him that I was not looking for a swift sale and profit and that, on the contrary, I was interested in farming it as a model estate with a profit-sharing scheme, he was gracious enough to tell me he would take the post. When I said that I was not sure if he was the man for me, he gave a little chuckle and said, “Dr MacAndrew, I am the only man for you.’”

  ‘How odd!’ said Mama, diverted. ‘Whatever did he mean?’

  ‘It emerged that he is of old Acre stock, though he left the village when he was a lad,’ John explained. ‘He seems to think he has friends in Acre still and he claims – I must say I believe him – that he can talk the village round to working for the Laceys again. But he prides himself on being a man of some principles, and that was why I suffered the inquisition. He would not get them back to work if there were any chance of us becoming absentee landlords, or selling the estate to a profiteer.’

  Mama nodded, but she hesitated. ‘When did he leave?’ she asked diffidently.

  Uncle John heard the uneasiness in her voice and smiled. ‘I asked him that, my dear,’ he said gently. ‘He is about our age, and he left when he was but a lad. He was gone before the old squire was killed in his riding accident. He was not working in Acre when Beatrice was running the estate. He was far away when the riot took place.

  ‘Besides,’ he added, ‘he’s certainly a radical, but not a hell-raiser by any means. He has strong ideas against property and against landlords, but they are nothing more than sensible people have been thinking for some time. He’s not a firebrand. He’s travelled. He’s a man of experience. I get the feeling he is anxious to come home to his roots and live in a prosperous village. We have much in common.’

  ‘Where will he live?’ I asked, visualizing Acre in my mind.

  ‘Is there a family called the Tyackes?’ John asked.

  ‘Yes!’ I replied.

  ‘He asked most particularly after their cottage,’ Uncle John said. ‘I think, when he was a lad, it may have been the best cottage in the village, and he has had his heart on it all these years. Julia, do you know them? Would they move?’

  I nodded. ‘There’s only Ted Tyacke and his mother now,’ I said. ‘The cottage is too big for them. Ted’s father was hurt in an accident, felling trees, and he died last year. Since then they’ve been struggling. If we could offer them a smaller property-perhaps that little cottage by the church which is empty – and a little present of some money, they’d be glad enough to go, I think.’

  Uncle John nodded, and he looked at me, somehow measuring me. ‘Whose cottage is it by the church?’ he asked as if he were testing Richard in Greek grammar.

  ‘It was the Lewes family’s,’ I said. ‘But a year ago they went back to Petworth where his brother has a shop.’

  ‘All the Acre history,’ John said to Mama, raising his eyebrows.

  ‘Julia knows the village better tha