Meridon (Wideacre Trilogy 3) Read online

  ‘Which way?’ Will gasped.

  My mind reeled. I had been heading for home, instinctively threading my way through the fashionable streets and the dark secret mews streets behind them. But I knew I could not keep up this pace. They would be upon us, and in any case I would lose my way in this warren of new gracious squares and back lanes.

  ‘The park!’ I said. I thought of the cool trees and the dark hollows where we might hide. I thought of the icy grass shining under the pale light of early morning. It was as like to country as we would get in London and I had a great longing for earth under my feet. Both Will and I were country children, we needed to be home.

  We swung left down Farm Street and I could see the high trees of the park, it seemed like miles away at the end of the street.

  ‘Down there,’ I said. I was running even more slowly, my throat was tight and my chest heaving. ‘You run, Will, you’ve got the deeds. Get them away. Get away with them.’

  He shot me a swift sideways look, his teeth gleaming in the half-light. The idiot was smiling.

  ‘We’ll make it,’ he said. ‘Keep running.’

  I was so angry with him not understanding that I could not keep running, I was finished, that my anger gave me a spurt of energy which bore me up. Also, I was afraid. That made me faster than our pursuers. Behind us were men, angry and greedy for my land, but they were not scared as I was. I had run from men too many times in my life not to feel my heart race when I heard boots on cobblestones behind me. My heart was thudding in my chest, and my breath was hoarse, like in my illness, but I could still run and run and run.

  We burst across the road. There were one or two carriages in the distance, but no one close enough, and anyway, the hue and cry was after us. If we called for help we might find ourselves before a magistrate, and I had a law-breaker’s terror of the justices.

  ‘Those trees…’ Will gasped. He was near the end of his strength too, he was wet with sweat, his face shiny in the pale light. He headed towards a little coppice of beeches and silver birches. They were stark in the pale shadows, their bare branches thin threads of blackness against the lighter sky. But they would give us some shelter.

  I shot a look behind me. They were hard on our heels, crossing the road even now. They would see us go into the coppice, we would not have time to hide. They would cast about and catch us.

  ‘You go on!’ I said peremptorily. ‘I’ll hold them up! For God’s sake, Will!’

  He turned roughly on me as soon as we were hidden from sight.

  ‘Drop your breeches,’ he ordered. I gaped at him and he dragged my cloak from my neck and bundled it under a bush of blackberry.

  ‘Drop your damned breeches!’ he whispered harshly. ‘You pass as my doxy!’

  Then I understood. I ripped the boots off my feet and tore the breeches off. My cravat went the same way, and I stood before Will in my night-shirt. Without hesitation he took a handful of the material at the neckline and ripped it so that it dropped down to my bubbies, showing my milk-white neck and shoulder, the rounded curve of my breast and the rosy nipple.

  Behind us, at the edge of the coppice we heard Thomas’ voice, and Redfern shouting:

  ‘Look up to the trees, check the boughs!’

  Will flung himself upon me and bore me down to the ground.

  ‘Open your legs for God’s sake, Sarah,’ he said impatiently, and rolled himself over so that he was lying on me. I felt him fumble at his breeches and I felt my white face burn red as he pulled them down so he was bare-arsed.

  ‘Will!’ I said in whispered protest.

  He had a moment to rear up and look at me, his face was brimful with mischief. ‘Stupid little cow,’ he said lovingly, then he dipped his head into my naked neck and started thrusting at me with his hips.

  ‘Holloa!’ came the yell behind him, Captain Thomas skidded to a halt and his bully-boys craned over his shoulder. Will kept his head down, I risked a peep over his shoulder. They were staring at me and at my bare splayed legs. I ducked my head down into Will’s warm jacket and inwardly cursed them and every damned man on the whoreson earth. I hated Will, and Captain Thomas, and Wideacre with every inch of my frigid angry body.

  ‘Did ye see a couple of gentlemen, run through here?’ Thomas rapped out.

  Will let out a great bellow of rage, or it would have passed for frustrated lust. ‘What the devil d’you think I’m doing, keeping watch?’ he hollered. ‘O’course I didn’t. What does it look to you that I’m doing? Go your ways, damn you. I’ve paid for twenty minutes and twenty minutes I’ll have!’

  They hesitated, two of them fell back.

  ‘They went that way…’ I said. My voice was silky, slurred. I gestured with an outflung hand and they saw my naked shoulder and the line of my throat, gleaming in the pale light.

  Captain Thomas bowed to me, ironically. ‘I am much obliged to you ma’am,’ he said. ‘And I apologize for disturbing you, sir.’ We heard him take two steps. ‘It seems the lady is less attentive than the man,’ he said and the men laughed. Then his voice changed. ‘Is that them? Boarding that coach? Dammit! After them!’

  We heard the noise of them crashing through the undergrowth and their yells to the coachman. We froze, as still as leverets in bracken, while we listened to the coach pull away, and them chasing after it, yelling to attract the guard’s attention. Then it was quiet. They had gone.

  Will Tyacke lay on top of me, his face buried in my neck, breathing in the smell of my sweat, his face rubbing against my skin, his hardness pushing insistently through my rumpled shift at the deep inner core of me where I could feel I was as soaking wet as any loving strumpet behind a hay stack.

  ‘It’s all right, Will,’ I said, my voice warm with laughter. ‘You can stop pretending. They’re gone.’

  He checked himself with a shudder but the face he raised to look at me was alive with love.

  ‘My God, I love you,’ he said simply. ‘It would be well worth being hanged for card-sharping to rip your nightgown open and lie between your legs – even for a moment.’

  I stretched in a movement as languorous and sensual as a cat. I felt as if blood had never flowed in my veins before this moment. I felt warm all over, I felt alive all over. My skin, the inside of my wrists, the soles of my feet, the warm palms of my hands, the tingling tip of my tongue, every tiny fraction of me glowed like gold. And deep deep between my legs I felt a pulse beating as if I had never been alive there before, as if Will was a plough to turn the earth and make it fertile, and that suddenly my body was no longer wasteland; but rich fertile ploughland, hungry for seed.

  ‘Not now,’ I said unwillingly. ‘They’ll be back when they’ve stopped the coach. They’re not stupid.’

  Will leaped up. ‘No!’ he said. ‘Here! Your clothes!’

  He reached into the blackberry bush, stamping his feet and cursing in a whisper when the briers scratched him. Then he turned his back in incongruous chivalry while I got dressed. I crammed my hat on my head, and wrapped my cloak around me.

  ‘Home to Wideacre,’ Will said decisively.

  ‘I’ve got to fetch Sea,’ I said.

  Will checked, looked at me to see if I was jesting.

  ‘We cannot!’ he said. ‘We cannot risk retracing our steps, going back the way we’ve come. We should strike across the park now, go west, double back later.’

  ‘I want Sea,’ I said stubbornly. ‘Sea will get us home. And you’ll want your horse.’

  ‘They’d send them on…’ Will started.

  ‘Not they,’ I said certainly. ‘I’m finished with the Haverings for all time. They’ll not send on as much as a pocket handkerchief of mine. I’m getting my horse out of their stables before they know their pigeon’s flown the coop.’

  Will hesitated, looked from my resolute face to the streets of the city which were getting noisy and busy as the sun rose.

  ‘I’m not going without Sea,’ I said.

  ‘Oh very well,’ he said sullenly, and