The Favoured Child Read online

  It was not true.

  There was a lie, somewhere.

  I was not a fool. I had been a fool over Richard many, many times. I had loved him without encouragement and without return. I had always thought there would be a time when he would take me in his arms and say he loved me, and our love would have changed, grown into adult love. Now that time had come.

  But it had come too late.

  ‘I do love you,’ I said slowly, ‘but I am not sure what that love means for us both.’

  ‘You have promised to marry me,’ Richard pressed. ‘When I am done at Oxford and we are of age, you will marry me, as we always planned.’

  ‘Richard…’ I said helplessly. His hands on my waist were closed in a hard grip, hardly a caress at all. I was trying to think of words to explain to him that he was my dearest brother and friend, but that the feeling of being in love was quite different, that he should not mistake his feelings for me.

  He drew me a little closer to him and his hand slid around my back. I felt my mouth grow dry with apprehension. He put a hand under my chin and turned my face up to him.

  He had always done as he wished with me. I had never said no to Richard, I had never even run away from his anger. How could I now learn to pull away from his touch?

  ‘Richard…’ I said softly.

  His hand smoothed my back and I could feel his warm body pressing against mine. One hand stroked my face, my cheek, my neck. But my body did not respond to him. It did not melt to his touch. Instead I heard a buzzing in my head like an angry bee and I could feel the hair on the nape of my neck standing up like the hackles on a frightened dog. For the first time in our lives, when Richard touched me, I drew away. I could not help but draw away. He made my skin crawl.

  Richard’s face came down lower and he kissed me lightly on the lips.

  I held myself still. Nothing would be gained by pulling away, and anyway I had my back against Misty and could step backwards no further. But when his lips were pressed harder on my passive mouth, I could not help but shudder.

  He misunderstood that shiver. He broke from the kiss and smiled down at me. ‘You are hot for me,’ he said confidently. ‘You love me and you want me.’

  ‘No,’ I said instantly. ‘I am sorry, Richard, but that is not how it is.’

  ‘You are wanton,’ Richard said coolly. ‘You have always been mine. You would come to me at any time, night or day, if I so much as snapped my fingers. But then you go away to Bath and think you have found another master, another lover. But I have come to claim you back. And here and now I do take you back.’

  ‘No, Richard,’ I said steadily. I was breathing fast, but there was a very sharp awareness in my mind that what Richard was saying was not true.

  ‘You are a whore and a wanton,’ Richard said pleasantly. ‘You would go with any man who flattered your monstrous vanity. You played the little squire all around Bath and made a show of yourself with finding the paupers and bringing them home. Now you have some cheap tradesman’s son sniffing around you and I am supposed to believe this is love! It is vanity and lust, Julia. You are my betrothed, and I will take care to keep you.’

  I wrenched myself from him and turned my head into Misty’s silver-grey shoulder. The clean smell of her warmth steadied me.

  ‘None of that is true,’ I said quietly. My temper was rising, but I had endured Dr Phillips’s stripping away of my most private hopes and fears, and I no longer rose to the slightest bait. ‘None of that is true,’ I said again. ‘I am in love with James Fortescue. I went to Bath a free woman. We did play at being engaged when we were children, but neither your papa nor my mama ever encouraged that. Since we have been grown, I have never felt that you loved me in that way. I love you as if you were my brother and I will continue to do so, provided you treat me well. There is no other relationship between us.’

  ‘Julia!’ Richard cried. His tone was so anguished that I turned back to look at him. His mouth was working, but his eyes were sharp. ‘You are breaking my heart!’ he exclaimed. ‘I have loved you all my life. I have refused invitations to balls and dinners in Oxford because I considered myself a betrothed man. Now you tell me this means nothing to you! Have you forgotten how much we loved each other in childhood, before all of Acre started to come between us? Before Mr Megson came back, before you started going out of the house instead of waiting at home for me.’

  It just did not sound right. I pulled back so that I could scan his face. ‘What is the matter with you?’ I asked softly.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said quickly. He said it too quickly, I heard it.

  ‘You do not have to love me,’ I said slowly. I spoke almost sadly. ‘You know that I love you and that I shall love you for always, as my dearest friend, as my brother. No one could take that love away from us. No one could replace you in my heart. There is no need for you to pretend you feel desire for me when you do not.’

  There was an invitation there if Richard had been the person to hear it, and understand it. But he was not.

  It was odd, for I had believed that it was women who were the romantic ones, who cling to lies and pretty mannered courtesies. I would have given every florist’s bloom in the world to have known what was in Richard’s heart on that bright day on the top of the downs. But he would not tell me.

  ‘I know I do not have to love you,’ he said gently. ‘But I can tell you, I can tell you freely, that I do love you with all my heart and soul.’

  He bent his dark head and kissed me again, and I felt such pity for him if he was telling the truth and such confusion about what I should do to help him that I let him kiss me. His breathing was coming faster and he was murmuring my name over and over as his lips went up and down the line of my neck from my collarbone to my ear.

  I wrenched my face away from him, and I put both my hands against his shoulders and tried to push him off me. Then I saw his face, quite empty of emotion, not warm and loving nor hot with passion, but with an absolute coldness behind his eyes as he looked at me and measured me.

  ‘Is it the truth that you no longer want me?’ he asked. His voice was like ice.

  I pulled my stock up around my throat and smoothed my jacket down. My hat had come off altogether and I pinned it back on as best I could. I felt rumpled and foolish. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I am sorry. I am betrothed to another man and I love him as a lover. I love you as a brother and that is all.’

  ‘Then you are faithless and you have broken my heart!’ he cried out and spun around to Prince and vaulted up into the saddle.

  ‘Richard!’ I said. But he wheeled Prince around so close that the flick of his tail stung me in the face. Richard, high on his back, was scowling. He jerked Prince to face back along the way we had come and then dug his heels in hard and used his whip too. Prince threw up his head and thundered away from us. Misty sidled, anxious, and I grabbed her reins.

  I did not hurry to follow. I let him go. I waited on the downs and I wept for the pain I had caused him, and that I should have been so stupid as to think that Richard could readily accept another in his place. I had never known before how much he loved me. I wept for my folly, and for the loss of that love.

  I led Misty over to a hummock which I could use as a mounting-block to help me into the high saddle, and I wiped my eyes on the back of my glove and sniffed miserably. Then I turned her head for home and went slowly down the bridle-track to the foot of the downs. And there he was.

  He was waiting for me, with Prince held on a short rein, standing very still at the side of the path. He was waiting for me with his sweetest smile.

  ‘Julia, I beg your pardon,’ he said handsomely, and put his hand out to shake mine.

  I was swept with a flood of relief that we were no longer quarrelling. ‘Oh! Richard!’ I said, lost for words.

  ‘To tell the truth, I am jealous,’ he said frankly, ‘but I make a very poor Othello. All this time I thought of you as a little girl, and you have been growing into a strong and beautiful woman.