Meridon (Wideacre Trilogy 3) Read online

  He paused, waiting for a response from me. ‘It’s not all dull,’ he said encouragingly. ‘She’ll teach you how to dance and how to play the piano and sing and paint. She’ll teach you how to ride side-saddle, and you can go hunting. She’ll chaperone you into country society and advise you about the people who you can visit and those you should not meet.’

  Still I said nothing. Mr Fortescue poured himself another glass of port. I knew he was uncomfortable with my silence. He could not judge for himself what it meant.

  ‘Sarah,’ he said gently. ‘If you mislike any of these plans you need only say. All I want to do is the best for you. I am your guardian until your marriage or until you are twenty-one but I know you are no ordinary young lady. You have special needs and special abilities. Please tell me what you would like, and I will try and provide it for you.’

  ‘I am not sure yet,’ I said. And I spoke the truth although certainty was gathering around me all the time. ‘I’ve been angry since I came here, but neither you nor that Will Tyacke pay me any mind at all.’

  James Fortescue smiled at me through the cigar smoke.

  ‘I don’t know enough about this life to be able to say what I want,’ I said. ‘It’s clear you don’t plan that I should run the estate like my mother did. I saw her apple orchard today and Will told me that she supervised the planting of it herself.’

  ‘No,’ Mr Fortescue said definitely. ‘I don’t want you working directly on the land. It would be contrary to your mother’s wishes and quite contrary to the way the estate is now run. For the past sixteen years, ever since your birth and your mama’s death, the estate has been developed by the people who work here, for themselves.

  ‘There is no place now for a squire of the old sort to run the land. The time when a Lacey squire was needed to keep the village together has long gone. It is run now as a joint venture by the labourers themselves and that is what your mother wished for it. She specifically told me that she did not want her daughter to be another Lacey squire. She wanted you to have the house and the gardens and the parkland – and you will see for yourself that is a handsome legacy – but she wanted the farming land, the Common land and the Downs to be owned legally and entirely by the village.’

  I nodded. That was what I had thought he would say.

  ‘So the life you think I should live is mostly idle?’ I asked. I was careful to keep my voice neutral so that he could not shape his answer to please me.

  ‘As you wish,’ he said agreeably. ‘My sister Marianne works long hours and gets much pleasure out of a charitable school she set up all on her own for the education of young orphans or children abandoned by their parents. Her husband is an alderman of London and she saw much poverty and hardship. She works longer hours than I do! Yet she is unpaid. She leads a most worthwhile life. There are many good causes you could work for here, Sarah.’

  I kept my lashes lowered over the gleam in my green eyes. I knew what his sister Marianne was like. When I was little we used to pick the pockets of her sort most successfully. One of us would sit on a lady’s silken lap and cry and say our da beat her, and one of us would take a sharp little knife and cut the strings which tied her purse to her belt and run off with the booty. We were caught only once and when we burst into floods of tears the lady made us promise never never to do it again or Baby Jesus would not be able to save us from hell. We promised readily and she gave us a shilling out of her recovered purse. A simpleton.

  ‘Or you could pursue interests of your own,’ Mr Fortescue went on. ‘If you found you had a talent for music or singing or painting you could work at that. Or if that horse of yours is anything to go by, you could find a good manager and have him set up a stud of horses.’

  I nodded. ‘And there are people who could teach me everything I need to know?’ I asked. ‘Music teachers and dance teachers and manners teachers? I could learn everything?’

  He smiled as if I was being engagingly eager. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Mrs Redwold could teach you everything you need to know. She could teach you to be a young country lady.’

  ‘How long?’ I asked.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ he said.

  ‘How long?’ I asked. ‘How long would it take for me to learn everything about being a young lady.’

  He smiled at that as if the question were funny. ‘I think one learns good manners all one’s life,’ he said. ‘But I should think you would be comfortable in good society within a year.’

  A year! I thought to myself. It had taken me less than that to learn to be a bareback rider with my own act. It had taken her two months to learn tricks on the trapeze. Either gentry skills were very difficult – or else they were full of nonsense and idiocy, like eating things while sitting so far away that you were certain to drop them.

  I said nothing and Mr Fortescue leaned forward and poured me another glass of ratafia.

  ‘It’s a lot to take in,’ he said gently. ‘And you must be tired, this is your first day up after your illness. Would you like to go to your bedroom now? Or sit in the parlour?’

  I nodded. I was learning some of the gentry rules already. He did not mean he thought I was tired, he meant he did not want to talk to me any more. I felt a bad taste in my mouth and I went to spit but caught myself in time. ‘I am tired,’ I said. ‘I think I shall go to my room. Good-night, Mr Fortescue.’

  He got to his feet as I went towards the door and he went past me and opened it for me. I hesitated, thinking he meant to go out too but then I realized he had opened it for me for politeness’ sake. He took my right hand and raised it to his lips and kissed it. Without thinking what I was doing I whipped it away and put it behind my back.

  ‘I beg your pardon!’ he said, surprised. ‘I just meant to say good-night.’

  I flushed scarlet with embarrassment. ‘I am sorry,’ I said gruffly. ‘I don’t like people touching me, I never have.’

  He nodded as if he understood; but I wagered he didn’t.

  ‘Good-night, Sarah,’ he said. ‘Please ring the bell if there is anything you want. Shall I ask Becky Miles to bring you up a cup of tea later?’

  ‘Yes please,’ I said. Having a cup of tea in bed would be comfortingly like eating dinner in my bunk, in the old days when it was too cold to eat out of doors, or when we were so tired we took our dinners into our bunks with us and dropped the tin plates down on the floor when we had done.

  I had never thought then that I would look back on those times with any of this lonely longing I had now.

  ‘And you may call me James if you wish,’ he said. ‘Uncle James, if you prefer.’

  ‘I have no family,’ I said dully. ‘I won’t pretend to an uncle I don’t have. I’ll call you James.’

  He made a little bow with a smile but he took care not to take my hand again.

  ‘James,’ I said as I turned to leave, ‘how often do you come down to the estate?’

  He looked surprised. ‘Once a quarter,’ he said. ‘I come down to meet with Will and I make up the books for the quarter.’

  I nodded. ‘How do you know he is not cheating you?’ I asked bluntly.

  He looked deeply shocked. ‘Sarah!’ he exclaimed, as if it were wrong to even think such a thing. But then he recollected himself and he gave me a rueful smile.

  ‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘This evening you look so like a demure young lady it is hard to remember that you have been brought up in a quite different world. I know he is not cheating me because he brings me bills of sale for all his purchases for the estate and we agree what the main expenses are to be each quarter before he buys them. I know he is not cheating me because I see the wage bills of the estate. I know he is not cheating me because the village is on a profit-sharing system with the estate and he sees that we all get good profits and thus a good share. And finally, but most important to me, I know he is not cheating me because, although he is so young, he is an honest man. I trusted his cousin and I trust him.’

  I nodded. The trust based on bi