The Favoured Child Read online

  Ralph measured him with a dark level look. ‘Yes, I think I understand,’ he said. ‘I won’t speak of this further tonight. But I am afraid you can do nothing about the wheat. The agreements have already been made.’

  Their eyes locked, like a pair of stags in battle. Richard was the master of Wideacre and Ralph was his agent. But Ralph would always be stronger, and it was Richard who looked away. ‘We’ll see,’ he said sulkily. ‘But do as I order, and tell Acre, Mr Megson.’

  Of course,’ Ralph said. He waited for a moment, and when Richard said nothing more, he pushed back his chair and went to the door. Richard lounged in the carver chair and watched him go, but I rose and went across the hall with him.

  He said nothing.

  I had expected a word from him, a word of blame, of disappointment, of condemnation of me as another Lacey woman who had been a fool and had betrayed the land. But I had nothing from him except a hard black look which was somehow full of pity. Then his hand was on the door and he was gone.

  He had left. He had left me alone, alone with Richard.

  I went slowly back to the library, twisting a fringe on my shawl. Richard had pushed his chair back from the table and tipped it on its back legs, balancing his weight with his booted feet against the table’s edge.

  ‘Megson all right?’ he demanded.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. I went to the window. The sun was going down behind the trees, out of sight. It had tinged the sky above the wood into cream and grey and rose. I leaned my aching head against the cool thick glass of the window and stood in silence.

  ‘I shall ride up to the hall tomorrow and see how the work is going,’ Richard said, ‘and on Monday I shall ask the foreman how quickly it could be completed if we doubled the workers. We shall move in there as soon as possible.’

  ‘Richard . . .’ I said. I turned towards him so I could see if he really was as calm and confident as he seemed. ‘Richard, we must talk. You cannot truly think that we can live together at the hall!’

  His face was as untroubled as a good child’s. ‘Why not?’ he demanded.

  I spread my hands out in a vague gesture and then brought them up to cradle my cheeks. ‘Richard!’ I said. ‘What John told us about our true parents alters everything.’

  Richard was blank. ‘Why?’ he asked.

  I leaned back against the window. It seemed to me that the world had gone mad all around me and that I had to hold on to my little corner of it or be engulfed.

  ‘We are brother and sister!’ I said as if he needed me to tell him. ‘Our marriage is invalid. And our child . . .’ I broke off. I could not say the word ‘incest’ and think of my poor little baby, so safe inside me, but so endangered by the madness of this outside world. ‘We will have to get the marriage annulled as John and Mama were going to do,’ I said. ‘Then we will have to live apart. I shall have to bear the shame of the baby somehow. I suppose you will have to live in London or somewhere.’

  Richard was as calm as the summer sky. He looked at me with tolerant sympathy, as distant from my confusion and pain as the early-evening stars. ‘Oh, no,’ he said sweetly, ‘it’s not going to be like that at all.’

  I looked blankly at him and waited.

  ‘Our marriage is already public knowledge,’ he said. ‘We have acknowledged each other, and I have acknowledged my child. We cannot withdraw from that.’

  My hands went out to him again, in a weak imploring gesture. ‘Richard…’ I said uncertainly.

  ‘We shall live here,’ he said. ‘And when the hall is built, we shall move into it. I shall take the name of Lacey, which we now know I have as much right to claim as you. We shall be Squire Richard Lacey, and his lady.’ He smiled at me. ‘It sounds well,’ he said equably.

  ‘Richard, we cannot!’ I exclaimed. The sense I had had of an insane world in which my lovely mama could be killed and I could find myself pregnant by my brother was slipping away from me. Coated with Richard’s silky tones, the mad mess which was my life sounded utterly reasonable. ‘We cannot!’ I said again.

  Richard’s chair rocked him gently as he bent and flexed his knees. ‘Why not?’ he demanded. In a sudden movement he dropped the chair down to stand four-square and turned in his seat to see me better. ‘We have announced our marriage; you are pregnant with my child,’ he said evenly. ‘We both know who it was permitted the conception, who it was insisted on the marriage. I agreed to it, to oblige you. I’m not now going to change tack because of a sudden whim of yours.’

  I put my hands to my temples. Richard’s view of the world and mine seemed so utterly different. I could not believe we had both been in the room when John had spoken of us with loathing as incestuous bastards who had repeated our parents’ black offence. ‘I cannot think!’ I exclaimed in the whirl of confusion.

  Richard stood up and came to me and pulled my hands from my face. ‘Be calm,’ he said firmly. ‘It is your condition which makes you so confused. Be calm, and trust me. I know what I am doing.’

  I let my hands stay in his comforting grip and I scanned his face.

  ‘You have no one else but me now, Julia,’ he said. ‘Don’t forget that you have no one else but me. You have to trust me. You can hardly manage on your own.’

  I took half a step towards him. I felt so very, very lonely. I leaned my forehead against his shoulder. After the icy touch of the glass his velvet jacket was warm, and I could smell the russet scent of his skin and curly hair.

  Oh, Richard,’ I said forlornly. His arm came around my waist and he stroked my back as one would comfort a sick animal.

  It was as if the world were a dangerous sea and Richard and I

  had been wrecked in the storms. All we could do now was to

  cling to each other and hope to stay afloat.

  *

  I carried on floating.

  I floated through the funerals when we laid the two of them in the Lacey vault. There was some muddle over the burial and they were placed side by side. I was glad of that. In the corner of my floating mind I was glad that they were close together in their death, that their dust would mingle. Grandmama gave a luncheon after the funeral and I received the condolences of the county, standing between her and Richard, speaking to people and hearing them speak as if we were all soundless fish, floating in a deep silky sea.

  Only one voice rang clear in the week which followed: Rosie Dench’s. She came with a package, not to the front door of the Dower House, but to the kitchen door. Stride showed her into the parlour where I sat, idly looking out. I was looking down the road as though I were waiting to see Mama and John rounding the corner in the gig, light-hearted after a drive.

  ‘I didn’t know what to do with them,’ Rosie said abruptly. ‘They were made for you, Miss Julia. Wideacre gloves for you. Whoever your choice is.’

  I turned back to the room. I could scarcely understand her. And then I remembered. Rosie had promised me some gloves. Gloves for my wedding day, for my wedding to James.

  She held out the package awkwardly. I tried to smile, but found I could not. I unfolded the wrapping-paper.

  They were the most beautiful gloves I had ever seen. Every inch of them glowed with colour. Wideacre colours – the colours of a Wideacre harvest. The background was pale, like the sky at dawn before the sun makes it rosy, to match a cream or a white gown, as my wedding gown should have been. On the back of each glove was a golden sheaf of wheat – yellow and gold – and a handful of wheatfield flowers: the scarlet poppies I love and deep-blue larkspur. Before the sheaf of wheat were crossed a sickle and a hook, as a reminder that wheat is not cut of its own accord. The gloves were longer than I usually wore them – Rosie might be an Acre field-girl now, but she would never lose her eye for fashion – and trimmed with a line of pale gold.

  ‘Rosie, thank you,’ I said. ‘You have a very great talent. If these were in paint rather than in silk, people would say you were an artist.’

  She ducked her head at that, and beamed. ‘I hope you’ll b