The Favoured Child Read online

  He gave a great shudder at the pinnacle of the very worst of it and then he collapsed and dropped his weight upon me as if I were nothing more to him than a bale of straw.

  I lay spreadeagled on the dusty floor, where once I had dreamed of passion, with the tears pouring down my cheeks in a morass of pain and misery. I could feel I was bleeding, I could feel a bruise forming on my thigh where he had knelt upon me; but I could not comprehend the pain inside me.

  He rolled off me and then was suddenly alert, looking out of the open doorway. He jumped to his feet, without a word to me, and, hitching his breeches, ran down the steps into the rose garden as if all the fiends of hell were after him. He ran from me as if he had murdered me indeed and he was leaving a sprawled body. I lay still, as he had left me, and I stared at the white roof and at the little hole in the timbers where the blue sky showed through, and I felt a little trickle of blood between my legs.

  My belly seemed to have gone into some sort of regular spasms of pain, for every now and then it eased, but then there was a great wave which came over me and made me gasp and bite the back of my uninjured hand so as not to cry out. My broken wrist was throbbing, and I could see it was bruised black and swelling.

  I lay on the dusty floor with my pretty cream riding habit pulled up to my waist and my hair tumbled down and spread in the dust, and I knew myself to be so broken and destroyed that it would have been better for me if Richard had completed his threat and strangled me while I lay there.

  I don’t know how long it was before I sat up. I did not think, I did not think at all about what had happened, or what I could do. All I could think of was an urgent, passionate need to be home. I wanted to be in my bedroom with the door locked. I wanted to be in my bed with the covers up over my head. I sat up, and then I took hold of the doorjamb and heaved myself to my feet. I staggered, but I did not fall. I seemed to have stopped bleeding. My dress was unmarked. I held tight to the door and took one shallow step at a time into the rose garden.

  Misty was gone. I shut my eyes and then opened them again in the hopes that I was mistaken, that she was where I had left her. But she had pulled her reins free and taken herself off home.

  I sobbed at that, the first sound I had made since I had said, ‘Richard, no!’ in a voice which would not have halted a mouse. Misty was gone and I could not see how I could ever get home. All I wanted, all I wanted in the whole world, was to be home and asleep.

  My head was swimming, and my knees buckled and I collapsed on to the step of the summer-house. I rested my head in the crook of my elbow and let the spring sunshine warm my back. I did not think I would ever feel warm inside again. I stayed like that, quite still, for what seemed like a lifetime of numb misery.

  Then I heard, in the woods, voices calling my name, over and over again, and a little silence between the calling while they listened for me. I heard hoofbeats on the drive, and Jem’s voice, harsh with anxiety calling, ‘Miss Julia! Miss Julia!’

  ‘I’m here!’ I said in a pathetic little voice. ‘Here, Jem! At the summer-house!’ I got to my feet and went down the drive to meet him.

  He was riding Prince, and I saw the horse suddenly leap forward when Jem caught sight of me. He was beside me in an instant.

  ‘Did you take a fall?’ he said. ‘Sea Mist came home with a broken rein and her saddle too loose. I guessed you’d come off her.’

  I nodded, too weary to speak and too full of pain and confusion to say the unsayable, to accuse.

  And anyway, I felt that it was me who was in the wrong.

  ‘Could you ride?’ he asked me, ‘or shall I go home and send for the carriage?’

  I nodded dumbly towards Prince. ‘I want to go home,’ I said pitifully. Jem lifted me up on to Prince’s back, and then vaulted up behind me. His arms were around me, holding me safe and steady, but for a moment’s madness I was suddenly afraid of him, of Jem, whom I had known all my life and who had come out calling and looking for me.

  I bit my bottom lip to keep myself from crying out. I knew I had nothing to fear from Jem.

  I had not smiled and walked with him. I had not kissed him before all Acre. And I had not promised that we should be married. All these things I had done with Richard, and then I had lied to him about my plans. I had never told him about the plan to live on Wideacre with James. I had never lied outright indeed; but I had kept silent.

  And when he had first kissed me in the summer-house, I had smiled.

  And when I had first felt his weight upon me, I had put my arms around his neck and opened my mouth for the taste of his tongue.

  ‘I’m going to be sick,’ I said abruptly to Jem, and turned my head away from him as I retched over Prince’s shoulder.

  Nothing came but a mouthful of bile with the acid taste of fear.

  Jem turned Prince’s head for home and took us down the drive at a steady walk. ‘Your ma stayed at home in case you were found, or walked home,’ Jem said gently. ‘Everyone else is out looking. I’ll sound the gong when we get in so they know. And someone will pull the school bell to tell ’em you’re safe found.’

  I nodded. Prince was walking on the soft turf in the centre of the drive. Even that smooth walk jolted my broken wrist and my clenched stomach almost more than I could bear. But the Dower House was in sight, and I gritted my teeth and kept silent.

  The front-garden gate was open, and Jem rode Prince right up the path to the door and shouted, ‘Holloa!’ through the open doorway.

  I could see a figure coming out from the front hall, and I could feel myself longing for my mama’s safe touch.

  But it was not my mama. It was Richard. My mama was behind him, but it was Richard who was first out down the steps and who reached up to lift me down from the horse, and who carried me in his arms like a little child come safe home to him.

  ‘Julia! Thank God!’ he said. ‘I’ll take her, Jem. There. Gently with that hand.’

  Then Mama was at his side and her cheek was cool against mine. ‘Poor darling!’ she said gently. ‘Did you fall?’

  I opened my mouth; Richard’s arms around me tightened slightly, imperceptibly. I glanced up at his familiar face, so close to mine. Richard, who had been my dearest love since my earliest childhood. His eyes were shining, he was smiling at me with such warmth, but a little hint of devilry lay at the back of his blue eyes.

  ‘Tell your mama, Julia,’ he said, and his voice was warm with laughter. ‘Tell us what happened and how you came to hurt your hand like this.’

  It was impossible.

  I could no more have told her the truth than I could have shouted obscenities at her. I would have been too shamed. Shamed for her, shamed for Richard and shamed for me.

  My throat tightened and the tears poured down my face. ‘I fell,’ I said. My throat was still sore and my voice was croaky. ‘I fell from Misty and she ran off.’

  Richard turned at once and took me towards the house, Mama holding my sound hand in hers as we went up the stairs to my room. Richard put me gently on the little bed and turned for the door. He paused in the doorway and looked at me, his face alight with amusement, and he closed one eye in a wink as if we shared a most delightful secret. Then he was gone.

  I slept until early afternoon when I woke to the noise of my bedroom door opening, and Mama came in with a tray in both hands and her eyes on the level of the milk in the jug.

  ‘Tea,’ she said. ‘Tea for the invalid. Julia, my darling, I cannot tell you what a fright you gave us all!’

  I tried to smile. But I had no smile. And when I sat up in bed, I found my lips were trembling so that I could scarcely speak.

  ‘My wrist hurts,’ I said childishly.

  Mama looked at it. ‘Good gracious,’ she said. ‘It looks badly bruised, or even broken.’ She put down the tray and went straight away out of the room. I heard her footsteps running down the stairs and then I heard her and John come back up together.

  He looked at my hand, half clenched against the pain, blue