The Favoured Child Read online

  I turned away at that while Richard paid him, and I went out into the companion-way and up the ladder, caring little this time for my skirts, and I turned my collar up against the chill and against the sadness of this mess that I was in. We went back down the gangway, walked to the inn, drank a silent cup of coffee in the parlour and then went outside to the curricle.

  Richard whistled a tune, in high good humour, and turned the horses north for home. The road off Portsmouth is like a causeway over mud-flats and tidal reaches. The tide was in and it was like a sheet of silver, with boats rocking at anchor and a beautiful schooner coming up on the afternoon tide, sailing low in the water from the weight of her load.

  ‘Home,’ Richard said with satisfaction, ‘and it’s my real home at last. For I’m the squire there now; there is only one squire there and it is me.’

  The horses tossed their heads and lengthened their stride, and I said nothing while Richard tightened the reins and the curricle stopped its swaying. My heart was like a lump of weighty ice inside me, and the sickness I felt was no longer from the baby but from the knowledge that I had lost my control over Wideacre and that I had given Acre a master I could not trust. I had given myself a master I could not trust.

  Already I had learned the slavish skill of watching my words. I waited until the horses’ pace was a controlled smooth canter and then I cleared my throat and said levelly, ‘There have been promises made by me in Acre, and contracts signed by me for the two of us. Some things cannot be changed, for they have been promised and we are honour bound to keep those promises.’

  Richard smiled at me and his eyes were empty of all guile. You could not look at him and not trust him. Of course, Julia,’ he said, at his sweetest. Of course, my dear cousin. My dear wife, I can now say! I was just thinking that now Wideacre is mine, you need not take responsibility for Wideacre in the way that you have done. Wideacre will be my job now, not yours. And besides,’ he went on, and his smile was warm, ‘you will be busy indoors, my darling, for in seven months’ time there will be work for you which no one but yourself can do.’

  I nodded, for that was true enough. But it chilled me when he spoke of Wideacre in that tone.

  ‘I shall always want to work on the land,’ I said. ‘You will be the squire, but I have been working the land since Uncle John came home. I could not give it up now just because we are married.’

  Richard said nothing; he was steering the horses past a cart piled high with newly stitched sails. We were clear of the town and I raised my head and smelled the clean air and felt the smells and the humiliation of that horrid ship blow away from me.

  Richard took his eyes from the road and glanced sideways at me and saw the colour coming back into my cheeks.

  Oh!’ he said, pretending he had suddenly remembered. ‘I’ve written to James Fortescue.’

  ‘You did what?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ve written to James Fortescue,’ Richard said lightly. Of course I did, Julia. I wrote and told him that we were to be married today. I had a feeling – I don’t know why – that you had neglected to tell him yourself. In any case, a gentleman should inform another gentleman of such an event.’

  My mouth was numb, as if Richard had smacked me in the face. ‘I had not told him,’ I said, half to myself. ‘I thought there was no need, after you had informed him our betrothal was over.’

  ‘Well, then,’ said Richard agreeably, ‘now you won’t have to!’

  I sat in silence. I could not imagine what James would feel when he opened a letter from Richard telling him that I was married. I could not imagine how he would tell Marianne, or his parents, who had been so kind to me. I could not bear to think how he would feel, or what he would think of me.

  ‘I sent the last of his letters back,’ Richard said nonchalantly. ‘In with my letter to him, I sent them back too. So there’s nothing for you to worry about.’

  ‘His letters?’ I exclaimed. ‘You said you had returned them over a month ago, when you met him on the road.’

  ‘Some of them then,’ Richard acknowledged, ‘but I kept some of them back to reread. There were some things he said that I wanted to study more carefully. I’ve sent them all back now anyway. He did write a lot, didn’t he?’

  My hands were hurting and I realized I had been clinging to the seat of the curricle. My knuckles were white.

  ‘He really did love you,’ Richard said, as if it were grounds for congratulation. ‘I’ve never read anything so passionate. When he wrote about watching you in the glove-maker’s shop, it sounded like he half worshipped you, and when he praised you for finding that Acre pauper. He really did love you, didn’t he, Julia? And now you’ll never see him again.’

  I took the inside of my cheek between my teeth and bit so hard I could feel the delicate skin swell. The pain of it gave me my voice back. ‘Yes,’ I said. My voice was hard. ‘Yes, he did love me very well. And I loved him. But the fact that you stole his letters to me and read them and returned them is not really important now. Even I know that. This is the last time I shall ever mention his name, and it should be the last time you name him to me, for you do not hurt me, Richard, and you do not make me angry.’

  We travelled in silence then, for many miles.

  ‘We’ll be home in time for supper,’ Richard said. ‘Probably before dark.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. I was numb.

  ‘I don’t think we should tell them right away. I have to go back to Oxford tomorrow. Let’s leave it until I come home.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘You probably won’t be showing it until then,’ Richard said cheerfully. ‘And if they do start becoming suspicious, you can always write to me at once and I will come home early.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said again.

  ‘You don’t seem very happy,’ Richard said impatiently. ‘It has all come out exactly as we planned when we were children, and you are going around with a face like a wet Friday.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. I said nothing more. I felt no need to apologize to Richard for being in the sullens. I felt no obligation to pretend I was happy. I was seventeen years old, and it seemed to me that I had been trapped and ensnared into a prison where my land would be taken from me, and my confidence that I was squire would be taken from me, and my happiness would be taken from me. The fact that I had entered the prison thoughtlessly, turned the key with my mind elsewhere and tossed it out of the window in folly meant that I could blame no one but myself for the mess I had made of my life.

  So I turned my head away from Richard and looked at the fields slipping by, and the pretty villages, and the clean streams, and the ripening wheat, and I said nothing at all. I did not weep. I did not cry out. I looked at the landscape and thought I must find from somewhere inside me the courage to go on and on and on until I reached a safe haven and could stop.

  But I knew I could not stop for a while.

  25

  I had been right that sad afternoon in the curricle, driving home. I had been right to think that I had to put my head down like a shire horse dragging a harrow through mud which was too thick. I could almost feel a weight of guilt around my neck and I bowed under it, and leaned against it, and tugged and tugged it with me through every warm summery day.

  ‘Julia, you are getting quite round-shouldered,’ Mama said in surprise from the parlour window as she watched me cutting roses in the garden outside. ‘Do try to stand up, my dear, and don’t look so grim. Is anything wrong?’

  ‘No, Mama,’ I said. I obediently straightened my shoulders and raised my chin, but I knew that I would forget and slouch forward again. I had the weight of an illegitimate child in my belly; I had a cart-load of guilt on my shoulders. I could not help but lean against it, like a man walking into a wind blowing against him.

  The wind was blowing against me all the last weeks of June and the first weeks of July while I waited for Richard to come home and thought about what would happen when we told them.

  Uncle John and my