Philippa Gregory - The Complete Wideacre Trilogy - Wideacre, The Favoured Child, Meridon

‘Watch out,’ said one, loud enough for me to hear. ‘Here comes the Master.’ The slow chuckle of country humour spread among them and I grinned too.

‘Enough of this,’ I said, loud enough for the whole reaper gang to hear. ‘You close up, all of you. John Simon, I don’t plan to keep your family in corn for free all winter! Move closer to William there. You, Thomas, you cut nearer to the hedge. Don’t think I don’t know what game you’re all playing! Any more of this nonsense I’ll have you all out at Michaelmas!’

Grumbling and chuckling, they closed the ranks and started the process again, scything their way in a line up the field, this time leaving no part of the swathe uncut. I smiled in pleasure at the sight of our corn rippling and falling in great pale golden heaps in our fields, and turned and made my way back to the landau.

Celia’s laugh trilled out, as happy as a mistle-thrush, and I saw my brother smiling warmly at her. I paid no attention at all.

‘D’you see now, Harry, how they’re closer together and there’s less waste?’ I asked.

‘Yes, I do,’ said Harry. ‘I did tell them but they just seemed to straggle apart again.’

‘They’re hoodwinking you,’ I said severely. ‘You must show them that you’re the Master.’

Harry grinned at Celia and I saw her smile shyly in reply.

‘I’m a worthless fellow,’ he said to Celia, begging for a contradiction.

‘You are indeed,’ I said before she could disagree. ‘Now get back to the men and don’t let them stop for more than ten minutes for tea, and they’re not to go home till sunset.’

He stuck to his job and the labourers did not trudge home to their cottages until long after sunset. Harry rode home whistling under a round golden harvest moon. I heard him as I dressed for dinner, and for some silly reason I felt my heart lift as his horse clattered up the drive and around to the stables. I paused in twisting my hair into a knot on the top of my head, and looked more carefully at myself in the glass. I wondered how I looked beside Celia. I was beautiful, there was no doubt, thank God, about that, but I wondered how my clear, bright looks compared to Celia’s sweet loveliness. And when I remembered the scene at the field it struck me, for the first time, that Harry might not relish being reprimanded by his sister in front of the men. Perhaps his heart did not lift at the sight of me, and certainly I knew he did not watch my body and my movements as I had watched his when he bent and stretched in the cornfield.

I slipped down to Mama’s room where she had a long pier glass so I could see my full-length reflection. The sight reassured me. Black suited me – better than the pale pinks and blues I had been forced to wear before. The gown was tight-waisted with black stomacher and square neck, showing me as slim as a whip. The shorter hair around my face twisted into natural curls (with a little help from the tongs) and my eyes in the candle-light were as inscrutable as a cat’s.

Behind the image of my dark figure the room was reflected in shades of shadow. The deep green curtains of the old four-poster bed were dark as pine needles in the light from my single candle and, as I moved, my shadow leaped, huge as a giant’s, on the dim wall behind me. Some trick of light, some nervous fancy, made me suddenly certain I was not alone in the room. I did not turn to look quickly behind me as normally I would have done. I stayed facing the mirror with my unprotected back to the room, my eyes trying to pierce the shadowy corners of the dark room reflected in the darker glass to see who was there.

It was Ralph.

He lay, where he had longed to be, on the master bed. His face was warmed with that familiar, that beloved smile that always lighted him when he turned to me. A look part confident, part male pride, part tenderness, and the anticipation of rough as well as gentle pleasure.

I froze. I could not see his legs.

I neither moved nor breathed.

I could not see his legs.

If they were whole, then the last months had been a nightmare and this was sweet reality. If they were gone, then the nightmare was with me and I was in its grip, but a million times worse than I had dreamed in my bed. The curtains of the bed cast deep slabs of shadow across the counterpane. I could not see his legs.

I knew I must turn and face him.

My face in the glass was the only bright thing in the dark room and it glowed like a ghost. I bit the inside of my cheeks for courage, and like a doomed man turned slowly, slowly, around.

There was nothing there.

The bed was empty.

I croaked, ‘Ralph?’ out of my tightening throat and only the candle flame moved. I took three stiff steps and held the candle high to see every inch of the bed. There was no one there. The pillows and the embroidered silk counterpane were smooth and undented. I put a shaking hand out to touch the pillows and they were cool.

No one had been there.

I staggered to Mama’s dressing table, set the candlestick carefully down, and crumpled on to the stool, my head in my hands.

‘Oh, God,’ I said miserably. ‘Don’t let me go mad. Don’t send me mad now. Oh, don’t let it end in madness when I am so nearly at peace at last.’

Long minutes passed in utter silence except for the steady ticking of the grandfather clock in the corridor. I took a deep breath and took my hands from my face. My face was as serene and lovely as ever and I gazed at it in the glass as if it belonged to someone else, a stranger’s beauty. Even I could not penetrate its calm looks or imagine what terrors were hidden behind that green cat-like gaze.

Then a floorboard outside the door creaked and the door opened. I jumped with a scream in my throat, but only Mama stood there. For a second she did not move and I read her concern for me, and some hint of a darker thought in her expression.

‘It’s not like you to be preening in front of a mirror, Beatrice,’ she said gently. ‘Did I startle you? What were you thinking of, I wonder, that you should be so pale?’

I smiled a strained smile and turned away from the glass. She said nothing but crossed the room and opened her top drawer and took out a handkerchief. The silence lengthened and I felt a familiar drumming of blood in my head as I became anxious, wondering what would come next.

‘You must have missed your pretty dresses when you saw Miss Havering this afternoon,’ my mother said, wrong as usual. ‘How lovely she looked, didn’t she? I thought Harry was most struck.’

‘Harry?’ I said mechanically.

‘There could scarcely be a better match,’ my mother said, spraying eau-de-cologne on the lace handkerchief. ‘Her dowry lands lie so convenient for our own – your papa always had his eye on them – and she is such a dear, charming girl. I understand she is accustomed to very difficult circumstances at home, and the poor thing is well used to adapting herself. Lady Havering assured me that, should there be a match of it, you and I would stay here as long as we wished. Celia would expect no alteration. I do not think that one could plan better.’

I felt a growing chill inside me. Mama could not be talking about a match for Harry. Harry was my friend, my companion. We farmed Wideacre together. We belonged together, alone on Wideacre.

‘A match for Harry?’ I asked incredulously.

‘Of course,’ Mama said, not meeting my eyes. ‘Naturally. Did you think he would stay a bachelor all his life? Did you think Harry would forget his duty to his name and die childless?’

I gaped at her. I had never thought of the matter at all. I never thought beyond this easy summer of my growing intimacy with Harry. Of the happiness I felt when he was so sweet to me. Of the warmth of his smile. Of the tenderness in his voice when he spoke to me.