Wideacre (Wideacre Trilogy) Read online

  She smiled in unaffected pleasure at the sight of me and said generously, ‘Why, Beatrice! You look lovelier than ever. You should be the bride, not me!’

  I smiled back, but wondered if she was right, and which of us — with a free choice — Harry would prefer.

  ‘Is anything the matter, Beatrice?’ she said, turning to me. ‘What are you thinking about to make you look so grave?’

  ‘I was thinking about your husband-to-be,’ I said, hoping to wipe the happiness from her face. I succeeded better than I meant. Her very heart seemed to stop and her face blanched.

  ‘You can go, Miss Hokey,’ she said to the dressmaker, and then sank down into the window seat, disregarding the fine silk of the dress, crushing it and creasing it under her twisting hands.

  ‘Can you come on the wedding tour?’ she asked, her brown eyes wide with fright. ‘He wrote me a note to thank me for asking you but it was not clear if you could come, or no. Can you, Beatrice? For the more I think about it, the more certain I am I cannot face going away with him alone.’

  ‘I can,’ I said triumphantly and watched her face light up.

  ‘Oh! What a relief!’ she exclaimed and she turned her face and leaned her forehead against the cool of the window pane. She heaved a shuddery sigh but I saw her face was still strained.

  ‘Is there something more troubling you, Celia?’

  ‘It is wrong of me, I know,’ she said. ‘But it is the thought of the … bridal night. The plans are that we drive from the wedding breakfast to the Golden Fleece at Portsmouth, you know, and take a boat to France the following morning. I cannot bear the thought …’ She paused and I could see the play of anxiety on her young face. ‘If I should be hurt,’ she said softly, ‘or very much afraid, I should prefer it not to be in a small hotel, especially in England and especially so near home.’

  I nodded. This might be meaningless to me. To me it was nonsense, of course, and all to my good. But I can recognize delicacy when I see it.

  ‘You are thinking that if someone gossiped then people might say things about you,’ I said understandingly.

  ‘Oh, no!’ she said surprisingly. ‘Not about me, but Harry. I should not like him to be distressed by gossip, especially if it was because of my foolish inability to …’ — she gasped —‘… behave as I must.’

  She really was a little darling! To be in such fear and yet think first of us. And it was good to know that the future Lady of Wideacre had a keen appreciation of our good name.

  ‘I am sure Harry would excuse you the first night,’ I said, and thought gleefully that his first night as a married man should be spent where most of his married life would be spent — with me. ‘With the journey to Portsmouth and then France, perhaps we should agree to travel as friends until we are comfortably installed in Paris.’

  Her eyes looked down and she nodded. In that assent she gave me another foothold in Harry’s life. I smiled encouragingly at her and hugged her. Her waist was slim and pliant and I felt the warmth of her body through the gown. She turned her sad face to me and leaned her cheek against mine.

  I felt the soft smooth skin just damp with the trace of a tear and could not avoid the thought that if she ever turned to Harry like this then all my passion and power would not hold him. Her lovely virginal body would be a potent attraction to a man like Harry, and her youth, her trust and her sensitivity would create in him the birth of a gentle and tender love. I gave her a little kiss on the lips and — coming as I did from Harry’s hungry bites — she was soft and sweet. Then I got to my feet and slipped out of my bridesmaid gown and into my grey riding habit.

  Lady Havering tapped at the door and came in as I was arranging my curls before Celia’s mirror.

  ‘Good gracious, Celia, get out of that gown immediately,’ she said in her firm oice. ‘You will crush it and spoil it sitting around like that.’ Celia dived for her closet. ‘I suppose you girls have been dreaming of your trip,’ said Lady Havering to me.

  I smiled and bobbed her a decorous curtsy.

  ‘It is so kind of Celia to invite me, and I’m so happy that Mama can spare me.’

  Lady Havering nodded. She was an imposing woman, well fitted to her leading position in our county. Large-boned, well-made, she had a presence that totally overwhelmed her pretty daughter and everyone else, too. She settled into a chair and inspected me with the frank appraisal of a woman of the Quality in her own house. How she had fitted into the little Bath town house with her invalid first husband I could not imagine. Lord Havering had recognized in the rich widow someone who would overlook the poverty of his position for the pride, and who would never let down appearances however badly she was treated. He had chosen well; Lady Havering had done her duty, cared for the children of his first marriage and added to the nursery on her own account. She ran the Hall as well as she could for a woman who now had no money and no love for the land, and made no complaint either of her lord’s frequent absences in London, nor at his frequent arrivals with a bunch of drunken friends who would roam about shooting pheasants, and riding down the corn.

  ‘I see your mama lets you ride alone,’ Lady Havering said abruptly. I glanced at my grey habit. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I suppose I should have stayed inside the estate but I wanted to see Celia and I didn’t think anyone would see me.’

  ‘Lax,’ said her ladyship, without meaning offence. ‘But then you’ve always been allowed a lot of freedom for a young girl. In my young days no young lady would have ridden any distance, not even with her groom or her brother.’

  So they knew at Havering Hall of my rides with Harry. I smiled neutrally and made no reply.

  ‘You’ll have to mend your ways when you come out,’ she said. ‘If you go to London you won’t be able to range around town on one of Harry’s hunters.’

  ‘No,’ I smiled. ‘But I believe Mama has no plans to take me to London.’

  ‘We might take you,’ she said generously. ‘If we open Havering House next season for Celia and Harry you could come along and be presented at Court. I will speak to your mama.’

  I smiled and thanked her. It would take more than the promise of an opportunity to curtsy to the King to get me off Wideacre, but next season was far away. I might have my moments of vanity but I never lost my senses so totally as to prefer the larger audience of London when I could stay at home. The ripple of admiration when I entered one of the Chichester Assembly Rooms was the most extreme flattery I had ever had, and I was not such a fool as to want more.

  ‘Shocking news of those bread riots in Kent,’ said Lady Havering, conversationally.

  ‘I haven’t heard any news,’ I said, suddenly alert. ‘What has been happening?’

  ‘I had a letter from a friend at Tunbridge Wells,’ said her ladyship. ‘There has been a riot and even some rick-burning. There was even talk of calling out the militia, but the Justices of the Peace arrested a few of the worst offenders.’

  ‘Surely it’s just the same as always,’ I said. ‘The harvest will not be a very good one this year. The price is going up already. The poor go hungry and a few bad ‘uns get up a crowd and riot until some landlord comes to his senses and sells them cheap corn. It happens nearly every bad year.’

  ‘No, this sounds worse than usual,’ she said. ‘I know one must expect insolence from the workers every time they have to do without, but this seems almost to have been a planned insurrection! Most dreadful! Let me see if I can find her letter.’

  She felt in her pocket and I prepared myself for the twitterings of an old lady, scared half to death at the fanciful report of distant events. But as she started reading I listened more intently, with a seed of cold fear growing inside me.

  ‘“Dear …” hmm, hmm, hmm, yes, here we are. “I hope your county is quiet for we have heard of the most dreadful events not twenty miles from Tunbridge Wells itself. I blame the Justices who have been so slack in punishing the disaffected in the past that the rabble think they have a licence to take whatever they want.