Wideacre Read online

  I listened to that secret beat, that hard wise secret, for a long, long time, until my cheek took the impress of the dead leaves and the front of my grey habit was darkened with the damp of the soil. The chill cooled me and hardened me, like a new-forged weapon of iron. Then I mounted my horse and trotted at a ladylike pace for home.

  We dined early for there was no point in waiting for Harry. I poured Mama’s tea for her in the parlour and she told me about her calls and the latest women’s tittle-tattle of the neighbourhood. I took care to nod and look interested. When she rose to go to bed, I threw another log on the fire and said I would stay and read for a few minutes longer. She kissed me goodnight and left. I sat stock-still, like an enchantress in a fairy story, my eyes on the burning log in the grate.

  The front door opened quietly. Harry made no noise crossing the hall, thinking the whole house was asleep. He saw the light under the parlour door and came in. I saw at a glance that it was as I had hoped. He had been drinking and was unsatisfied. His walk had a quickness and an alertness. His blue eyes sparkled.

  ‘Beatrice!’ He said my name as a thirsty man might say, ‘Water!’

  I smiled and, more like an enchantress than ever, said nothing, but let the magic of my body and face draw him from the doorway across the room to kneel at my feet before the fire.

  ‘I felt we should be apart today,’ he said hesitantly, apologetically. ‘I needed to think.’

  My face showed no sign of my impatience at his silly lie. Harry think indeed! I knew he had lost his nerve and — afraid of my sensuality, afraid of his own, afraid of the sin, afraid of the consequences — had fled to Celia’s coolness to escape the heat of home. And I knew well enough what had happened there. Celia and her pretty young sisters had petted and teased him all afternoon; Lord Havering’s good wine and generous glasses of port had made him bold again. He had begged a moonlit walk in the garden with Celia and her frightened, struggling refusal of a kiss had set him on fire again with unsatisfied desire and brought him back to my feet. But it was not love with Harry. And it should not be love with me.

  ‘I hope you did not mind,’ he asked tentatively. He looked up at me and took one still, unresponsive hand. I looked as if I had no idea why I should mind. My hazel eyes fixed on the fire were wide open with detached and polite interest in Harry’s conversation.

  ‘I was afraid of us as lovers,’ he confessed honestly, his eyes fixed on my face. Still I said nothing. My confidence was growing but I was still chilled inside from my sad vigil in the wood. And I would never love a man who did not love me more.

  He fell silent and I let the silence stretch.

  ‘Beatrice,’ he said again. ‘I will do anything …’

  It was a clear plea. I had won.

  ‘I must go to bed,’ I said, standing. ‘I promised Mama I would not stay up late. We did not expect you back so soon.’

  ‘Beatrice,’ he said again, looking up at me.

  If I had slackened my control and allowed so much as one of my fingers to touch one of the curls of his head, I should have been lost. I would have collapsed to the hearth rug with him and he would have taken me that night and left me the following morning for Celia on a pendulum that would have swung every day of a miserable life. I had to win this struggle with Harry. If once I lost him, I lost not only the love of the one man I wanted, but I also lost Wideacre. I had staked my life’s happiness on this indecisive, conscience-ridden creature and I had to win. Against his own good conscience and against his own good, sweet betrothed, I had set his passionate nature and the taste of perverse pleasure he had with me — my whip on his thigh, the taste of blood when I bit his lips, which he would never have with gentle Celia.

  I smiled down at him but took care not to touch him.

  ‘Goodnight, Harry,’ I said. ‘Perhaps we will ride on the downs together tomorrow.’

  I undressed slowly in a dream by candle-light, hardly knowing whether my desperate gamble had won me security or whether I had lost everything. Was Harry even now on his knees at his bedside praying like a good child for God to keep him pure? Or was he still kneeling by my chair in the parlour burning with desire? I slid between the sheets and blew out the candle. In the dark I could hear the house settle in the silence but I lay wakeful, reliving the scene downstairs and aching for my lover. I waited for sleep but I expected to lie awake. My aroused heart beat fast and every muscle in my body quivered in expectation.

  In the silence of the night I heard an odd, soft noise and I held my breath to listen. I heard it a second time — the creak of a board in the passage outside my door and then — the most welcome sound in the whole world — a soft sad moan as Harry pressed his forehead to the unyielding wood of my door and kneeled on the floorboards outside my room.

  He did not dare to try the handle of the door; he did not dare even to tap on the door to see if I would let him in. He was like a whipped dog in the passageway and knew his master at last. He knelt in longing and in remorse and silence on my threshold. And I let him wait there.

  I turned over in bed, smiled in silent delight … and slept like a baby.

  My mother teased Harry about the dark shadows under his eyes at breakfast and said she did not know what to blame — Celia’s pretty face or Lord Havering’s port. Harry smiled with an effort and said with careful nonchalance, ‘A morning’s gallop on the downs will soon blow the cobwebs away, Mama! Will you come riding with me today, Beatrice?’

  I smiled and said, ‘Yes,’ and his face lightened. I said not another word at breakfast, nor did I speak until we had ridden up past our fields where the corn was ripening to the downs. Harry led the way like a practised lover to our little hollow among the ferns, dismounted and turned to help me.

  I kept my seat and looked steadily down until I saw his confidence waver.

  ‘You promised me a gallop,’ I said lightly.

  ‘I have been a fool,’ he said. ‘I have been mad, Beatrice, and you must forgive me. Forget yesterday, remember only the day before. Don’t give me that pleasure and then rob me of it. Punish me another way, be as cruel to me as you like but don’t teach me of the loveliness of your body and then take it from me. Don’t condemn me to live in the house with you, to see you every day and yet never be able to hold you again! Don’t condemn me to a living death, Beatrice!’

  He stumbled to a halt on what was nearly a sob and as he raised his face I saw his mouth trembling. I reached out to him and let him hold me as I slid down from the saddle. But I freed myself when my feet touched the turf and stepped back so we did not touch. His eyes were hazy blue with desire and I knew mine were dark. The slow, warm heat of arousal was beating in my body and my control over myself and over this scene was slipping fast. My anger at Harry and my conflicting desire to be under him again fused into one passion of love and hatred. With my full force I slapped him as hard as I could on the right cheek and then struck him a violent back-handed blow on his left cheek.

  Instinctively, he jerked back and lost his footing over a tussock of grass. I followed, and still guided by wordless anger, kicked him as hard as I could in the ribs. With a great groan of pleasure he doubled up on the grass and kissed the toe of my riding boot. I tore off my dress as he ripped his breeches away and flung myself like a wildcat on him. Both of us screamed as I rode him astride, like a stable lad breaking a stallion. I pounded his chest, his neck and his face with my gloved fists until the climax of pleasure felled me like a pine tree to lie beside him. We lay as still as corpses under our sky for hours. I had won.

  7

  The following day I went to call on Celia. Mama chose to come too and she and Lady Havering closeted themselves in the parlour with wedding-dress patterns and tea and cakes while Celia and I were free to wander in the garden.

  Havering Hall is a bigger house than Wideacre — built on a different scale as a great showpiece, while Wideacre has always been a manor house extended and improved, but firstly a beloved home. Havering is large, rebuilt in