Wideacre Read online

  ‘She is actually rather afraid,’ I said fairly. ‘It seems that she experienced some rough wooing.’

  ‘Rough!’ exclaimed Harry. ‘Beatrice, I swear I only kissed her on the lips and held her in my arms. I may have pressed …’ He broke off. ‘But I would hardly call that rough. Would you?’ His reasonable tone of argument died on his lips as he recalled exactly what would seem rough between us and he grinned with remembered pleasure. With one accord we rose from the table and stood side by side at the fireplace looking down at the smouldering logs. In the mirror above the fireplace I could see how the dark violet gown enhanced the colour of my smiling sun-rosy face. How my hazel eyes gleamed more cat-like and satisfied than ever. The sun had placed copper lights in my hair and they gleamed through the light powder. I stood at arm’s length from Harry, teasing myself with his nearness.

  ‘She would like an arrangement,’ I said.

  ‘She means this?’ Harry asked incredulously.

  ‘I believe so,’ I said honestly. ‘She knows Wideacre must have an heir and she’s prepared for that. But I think at heart she’s a cold woman who prefers to be alone. She’s a quiet girl, and shy, and it isn’t hard to guess that her home must be a torment to her. What she wants is the position and peace of Wideacre without having to pay for it more than once in the shape of a son.’

  ‘How would this suit us, Beatrice?’ Harry asked and my heart warmed at this reassurance that it was my word now at Wideacre. It would be I who decided whether the wedding went ahead or not. Celia could be the pawn I moved on the chessboard of my desires. My mama, too, could be present or absent as I desired. I held the Master of Wideacre in the palm of my hand, and his land, and his power, and his wealth, were mine as they should be.

  I shrugged negligently.

  ‘It is your choice, Harry,’ I said, as if I did not plan to make the decision. ‘You have to marry to come into full ownership of the estate and to take control of the capital from the lawyers. Otherwise we will have to wait until you are of age. It might as well be Celia as any other. The plans have gone ahead and it would be difficult to withdraw. Besides, a wife who does not seek your company too often will make it easy for us to be together.’

  Harry glanced up quickly from watching the fire to look at me, tantalizingly out of reach.

  ‘Do you find me rough, Beatrice?’ he asked thickly.

  A denial and reassurance in case he was afraid he had hurt me was on the tip of my tongue, but some wise instinct made me pause. There was some flaw in Harry that mingled pleasure and pain in his mind and that I never would understand. The thought of hurting me was making him breathe a little faster, was making his cheeks flush. I did not dislike it, for his arousal made me shiver inside. Harry’s way would never be my way. Yet I could satisfy him.

  ‘Yes, you hurt me,’ I breathed.

  ‘Are you in pain?’ he asked, as taut as an animal ready to spring.

  ‘I am bruised,’ I said. ‘You hammered my head on the ground and you bit my lips till they bled.’

  We were both breathing faster but still I stayed just out of his reach.

  ‘Were you afraid of me?’ Harry asked.

  My eyes met his and I could see our family likeness. Brother and sister, our darkened eyes of desire were the same. In that frozen hot second we were more than siblings, we were like twins.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But I shall have my revenge when I hurt you.’

  I had the key to Harry. The statues moved. His arm pinned me to him for a hard biting kiss and his other hand smoothed down the silk of my back and then clenched my buttocks with his fingernails digging in. My mouth opened wide under his and he forced me down on the dining-room floor and took me as roughly as an enemy. One of his hands clasped mine above my head so that I was helpless beneath him, while the other hand pulled up my skirts and petticoats. But when I struggled he instantly released me and checked his inexpert heavy thrusts. But I freed my hands only to hold him closer and guide him inside me.

  ‘My love,’ I said. Perverse. Wordy. Pompous. He was still the Squire of Wideacre and I wanted him inside me.

  ‘My love,’ I said.

  I slept in my own bed, the first sweet sleep I had had since the death of my father and the crippling of Ralph. My darling Harry had taken from me the dreadful tension and I felt I could rest. Not once in the night did I hear the snap then the thud of a closing mantrap and the sharp crack of breaking bones. Not once did I jerk into wakefulness, thinking I heard a clank outside my door as some hideous cripple clawed into my room, dragging his legs in the mouth of a monstrous trap behind him. Harry had set me free. The golden boy had released me from my darkness, and I no longer ached with pain and fear, nor with longing for those I had loved whom I would never see again.

  And their loss now seemed to me to be part of the natural order of things. In farming you have to break the earth and drain ditches to make the land flower and fruit. I had done some breaking; I had ordered a culling. But now the new life was in the earth; there was a new young master, and the proof that I had done right was that the future was very bright and sunny, and that I was safe on the land where I belonged.

  I stood before the little mirror on my dressing table and tilted it to see how I must look to Harry. I saw a bruise mouth-shaped on my left breast and I touched it with wondering fingers that I should have been bitten so hard, and yet remembered no pain. In the morning sunshine my skin had the bloom of a ripe peach, ready for picking. From my feet, so white with such high-arched insteps, to the copper curls that framed my face and warmed and tickled the curve of my bare back, I was made for loving. I fell back on the bed, my hair fanned out on the pillow, and craned my neck to see in the mirror how I had appeared to Harry when he took me on grass or on wooden floor, wide-eyed and wide-legged. Watching myself I became luxuriously certain that Harry would soon come to me. It was early; my maid would not call me for an hour; my mother was still safe in her drugged sleep. Harry and I could lie together now and steal off to a hollow in the downs or in the woods after breakfast.

  I did not move when I heard the step outside my door but simply turned a lazy head to the opening door and smiled my welcome to Harry. Instead — I jumped as if I had been scalded — there was my mother!

  ‘Good heavens, child,’ Mama said calmly. ‘You’ll catch your death of cold. Whatever are you doing?’

  I held my tongue and blinked lazily at her. The only thing I could do.

  ‘Have you just woken?’ she asked. I yawned and carelessly reached for my shift.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I must have thrown off my clothes in the night as it was so hot.’ I felt better with my shift on, but underneath my relief I was prickly with irritation — at myself for that guilty start, and at my mother who walked so calmly into my room as if she owned it.

  ‘How lovely to see you up and about again,’ I said smiling. ‘Are you sure you are well enough? Hadn’t you better go back to your room after breakfast?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Mama as if she never had a day’s illness in her life. She crossed the room, her morning dress rustling, and made herself at home on the window seat.

  ‘I am feeling so much better! You know how it is with me after these attacks. Once they are over I feel as if I should never be ill again. But you, Beatrice,’ — she narrowed her gaze and looked at me closely as I sat up in bed — ‘you are looking so well, so glowing! Has something pleasant happened?’

  I smiled and shrugged my shoulders.

  ‘Oh, nothing really,’ I said dismissively. ‘Harry took me for a ride on the downs yesterday, and I felt so happy again to be out and about in the lovely weather.’

  Mama nodded.

  ‘You must go out more,’ she said. ‘If we could only spare a lad from the stables it would be all right for him to ride behind you and then you could go out more. But I doubt if there is one to spare with the horses wanted out on the land. Still once Harry is married you will have Celia for company. You can teach her to ride and take