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

‘I can hardly wait,’ I said and leaned on Harry’s arm as we watched the grooms load the trunks and boxes in the stable yard. Harry’s hand, out of sight, caressed the small of my back in silent agreement. His square hand straddled my spine and stroked me like a cat. Imperceptibly I swayed towards him.

‘Two months of nights,’ he said softly. ‘Two months of nights and no one to notice us.’ His hand rubbed up my spine sliding on the silk of my dress and I had to school my face not to shut my eyes and purr like a stable kitten. The muscles of my face I could keep still, but no control on earth could have stopped my eyes from growing green with desire. The servants were busy round the coaches and no one glanced at us.

‘May I come to your room tonight?’ Harry asked, his mouth so close to my ear I could feel the warmth of his breath. We had been together very seldom in the past few weeks of my illness and drugged sleeping and I could feel my old appetite rise in me. ‘I am a bridegroom, remember,’ Harry said.

I chuckled. ‘Then you should be out carousing with your friends, enjoying your last night of freedom before your jealous, your passionate, wife claims you for ever.’

Harry laughed softly with me. ‘Somehow I cannot see Celia in that role,’ he said. ‘But truly, Beatrice, I should like to lie with you tonight.’

‘No,’ I said, slowly relishing the pleasure of a short abstinence. I pulled myself away from him and turned to face him, my slanty eyes half closed from that secret, brief caress.

‘No, I shall come to you as your bride tomorrow, on the night you are wed.’ I swore it as a promise. ‘Tomorrow we will stand together before the altar and every word you say, every “to have and to hold”, shall be for me. And every reply you hear, every promise to love and honour, every “I do”, shall be from me, although Celia’s is the empty mouth that speaks. She is the bride, but I shall be the wife. It can be her day tomorrow, for tomorrow night will be my night. And tomorrow night, not tonight, my darling. For tonight you can dream of me, and think of me. Tomorrow night the three of us will retire to our rooms and Celia may sleep the sleep of the good and stupid, while you and I will not sleep at all!’

Harry’s blue eyes were bright. ‘I agree!’ he said quickly. ‘This shall be our honeymoon, yours and mine. It is you I marry, and you I take away with me, and Celia can come as the servants or the luggage comes – to serve our convenience.’

I sighed with the pure pleasure of sensual anticipation and the pleasure of victory. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Tomorrow we marry, and tomorrow night we mate.’

We did both. The magic tide that carried me along took me to Harry’s side in the church. I stood before the altar in a dream and heard Harry’s voice promising such pleasures of wedding and bedding that I could think of nothing but what was ahead of me that night.

Celia was, predictably, faint with nerves, and after Lord Havering had conducted her to her bridegroom and stepped back, I had to move forward to support her. Only her slight body stood between Harry and me, and as he spoke the promises of love and pleasures and loyalty he was able to meet my smiling eyes with his bright ones and make all the promises to me.

Celia whispered her responses, and then the service was over. The wedding breakfast was, as one would expect, an insipid affair with much simpering and weeping over Celia who looked flushed and shy and lovely. There was very little attention paid to me, or to Harry, who stood in a corner and drank heartily with Lord Havering. It was tedious. I had no one to talk to and was forced to endure Celia’s silly sisters and sillier friends. Even Lord Havering’s quick lecherous glances raking the length of my body in the grey silk dress did little to console me, for he took Harry off to the study and, apart from some elderly neighbours, we women were left on our own. That made the arrival of Dr MacAndrew all the more of a pleasure, and the ripple of interest as he crossed the room straight to my side made me raise my eyes and smile at him.

‘I am very pleased to see you,’ he said, taking a seat beside me. ‘And on such a happy day, as well.’

I noted his tact in not referring to my health and I saw also, for the first time, what an attractive man he was. The other girls – the Havering sisters and Celia’s two other bridesmaids – were watching him like sparrowhawks out of the corner of their eyes, and I turned my head to smile at them and rub their silly noses in their simpering vanity.

‘Will you be away very long, Miss Lacey?’ he asked in his gentle Scots voice.

‘Just till Christmas,’ I said. ‘I could not bear to be away from home at Christmas and Harry and I both want to be back in plenty of time for the spring sowing.’

‘I hear you are a keen agronomist?’ He said it without a hint of the patronizing amusement I was used to from neighbours whose lands yielded half the profits of ours and yet thought my interest unbecoming.

‘I am,’ I said. ‘My papa reared me to take an interest in our land and I love Wideacre and am glad to learn all I can about it.’

‘It is a fine thing to have such a lovely home,’ he said. ‘I have not the advantage of a country seat. My family has always bought and sold property so frequently I never had a chance to put down roots.’

‘You are an Edinburgh family?’ I asked with interest.

‘My father owns the MacAndrew Line,’ he said diffidently. At once, pieces of information slipped into my head like the solution to a puzzle. His presence in the Haverings’ house was explained at once. The MacAndrew Line was a highly successful line of trading ships plying from London, Scotland and India. This young doctor came from a family of fabulous wealth. Lady Havering would be swift to overlook his unusual profession in return for a chance at one of the greatest fortunes in Britain. She would have already earmarked him for one of the girls, and Lord Havering would already have tried to persuade the young doctor to invest in some sure enterprise that his lordship could set in motion if he only had the advantage of a few of the MacAndrew thousands.

‘I am surprised he could spare you so far from home,’ I said.

Dr MacAndrew laughed shortly. ‘I’m afraid he was unhappy when I left the family home and the family business,’ he said. ‘He wanted very much for me to work with him, but I have two older brothers and a younger one as well who will do that. I set my heart on medicine ever since I was a young boy and despite my father’s objections I managed to get my training at the university.’

‘I should not like to have much to do with sick people,’ I said, speaking without reserve to this gentle young man with the warm eyes. ‘I don’t have the patience.’

‘No, why should you?’ he said sympathetically. ‘I should like everyone in the world to be as fit and as strong as you. When I have seen you galloping your horse up to the downs, I have laughed with sheer pleasure at such a brilliant sight. You would not fit in a sickroom, Miss Lacey. I would always prefer to see such youth and loveliness in the open air.’

I was flattered. ‘You should not have seen me galloping at all,’ I said demurely. ‘I was not supposed to go off the estate while we were in mourning, and I should never gallop in public. But when one has a good horse, and the wind is blowing just softly, I cannot bear not to.’

He smiled at my enthusiasm and fell to talking of horses. I had noticed, even in the period of my illness, that he had a good eye for a horse. The bays that pulled his curricle were a splendid pair: high-stepping, arch-necked, ruddy-bronze.

I had even wondered idly where a young doctor found the money to buy such beauties, but now he had explained that. I told him about the first pony Papa bought me, and he told me of his first hunting dog, and I forgot that half the eyes of the room were on us.