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

‘And at tea time,’ I said smiling.

‘And breakfast,’ he said.

He rolled over and checked his watch lying on the bedside table.

‘I must get dressed,’ he said. ‘Celia will soon be back from buying provisions for the voyage and I have to make sure she packs all my papers.’

I nodded but did not move.

‘Write to me as soon as you get home,’ I said. ‘I shall want to hear about Wideacre. Remember to tell me which cows are in calf and how the winter wheat is looking, and if the hay will last.’

‘And about Mama,’ said Harry.

‘Oh, yes, and about Mama,’ I concurred.

‘And you take care of yourself,’ said Harry tenderly, reaching for a clean shirt. ‘I wish you would come home with me now, Beatrice. I do hate the thought of leaving you all alone here.’

‘Nonsense,’ I said gently, and slid out of bed. ‘Celia and I will be perfectly all right. We will enjoy a leisurely journey home and we can travel with Lady Davey and her daughters as soon as they arrive in town. Then you can come and meet us at Portsmouth, or even if you wish come over to France.’

‘I may well do so,’ said Harry, brightening. ‘But only if I get my sea legs this time. I do dread the voyage, I must admit. You are well out of it, you little coward.’

‘Chicken-hearted,’ I agreed, smiling. I turned my back to him and swept up my long hair so he could fasten the little buttons I could not manage at the nape of my neck. His fingers fiddled with the little fastenings, and when he had done he bent his head to kiss me on the hairline, and tenderly grazed the strong muscles of my neck with his teeth. I leaned against him, enjoying the shivers that ran down my spine at the touch of his mouth. On the tip of my tongue was the confession that we were expecting a child. I thought for a moment that if only we were as we seemed to be – a mutually adoring married couple – how blissfully happy Harry would be at the news.

But my caution and my keen cool brain held me back from a confession grown out of the sweetness of love in the early morning. Harry’s loyalties were already divided. I could not risk him protecting Celia from the injury that was coming to her. She might be too naive and silly to realize that in accepting my son as her own she would displace her own children for ever – but Harry was not. He would never consent to have my bastard son (even though fathered by himself) as his heir, when his wife could have other legitimate boys of her own.

My mood of relaxed love and trusting confidence passed. I would never trust anyone with all my secrets, not even my darling Harry. We had grown close and relaxed on this long easy journey, but there was a cutting edge in me, a sharpness of wit that Harry lacked. Harry was my lover, my desire, but he did not make me shudder as Ralph could, with one sideways glance. And I could not imagine Harry wading through sin and crime to come with bloody hands to me. With Harry I was the master; with Ralph we were sensual, passionate equals; equally sharp, equally wise. Good hard lust I had for Ralph; Harry gave me worship and kisses and cuddles like some lovesick youth.

I had two hanging crimes locked in my heart, and passing off a bastard was no light offence either. No one would ever again see fully into my heart as Ralph had done in the early days. No one ever again would hear a straight answer from me. Ralph was not the only one crippled in that dreadful trap – my honour, my honesty, was broken there, too. And I was right to be cautious with Harry. His next words proved it.

‘Take care of Celia, Beatrice,’ he said, tying a fresh cravat and eyeing it critically in the mirror. ‘She has been such a little darling on this trip. I would not want her to miss me too much. Look after her and remind me to give you some spending money before I go, to buy whatever little things she wants.’

I nodded, and said not a word as he frittered away money from Wideacre, needed at Wideacre, on French trifles for a woman who already had enough.

‘I shall miss you,’ he said, turning from the mirror to hold me again. I slid into his arms and pressed my face against his clean starched shirt, sniffling with pleasure the clean smell of the linen and the warm smell of Harry underneath.

‘Do you know,’ he said in sudden surprise, ‘I shall miss you both! Come home as quickly as you can, won’t you, Beatrice?’

‘Of course,’ I said.

Of course I lied.

The circumstances made it easy for me to lie. But first I waited, waited a month in the old Bordeaux hotel until I heard from Harry in England. I smiled when I opened the letter because it was as I had expected. Our loving mama had her boy home again and she was not going to let him go. Harry – in a boyish anxious scrawl – wrote me that there were problems with the land, much poaching of the coverts, a field we had wanted to lie fallow had been mistakenly ploughed, and one of the tenants had had a fire in his barn and needed a loan.

‘Mama seems quite overwhelmed by the work necessary to run the estate,’ Harry wrote. ‘I arrived to discover that she is suffering from very serious spells of breathlessness, which leave her quite weak. She had even concealed how bad they are from Dr MacAndrew. I think it impossible that I should leave her alone in charge again, so I beg you, poor darling Beatrice, to hire a courier and get your dear selves home either cross-country or sail.’

I nodded. I had known the estate would be too much for Mama. It was a full-time job for someone who knows and loves the land and a weak incompetent like Mama could be destroyed by the responsibility and the things that, naturally, are always going wrong. That was the risk I took when I could not bear to let Harry and Celia travel alone. Then I took another risk with Wideacre – leaving the estate in Mama’s feeble hands. Now I had to trust to luck that Harry would wreak no great damage before I came home. For Harry had to stay in England, and I had to stay in France until our son was born.

I took up a pen and cut absently at the nib until I thought of the things I needed to say. I started my letter to Harry and confined myself entirely to business. The field should be planted with clover since it had already been ploughed. The tenant should be granted a loan at 2 per cent interest to be paid in cash or in produce from his farm, with his stock as security. The gamekeeper must either be made to work harder, more effectively, or dismissed. Lord Havering would know where Harry could find another. But then my tone grew more intimate. I told him I missed him badly – which was true – and that France gave me little pleasure without him – which was half true – and that I was longing to return home – which was not true at all. Then I nibbled the top of the pen and wondered how to break the news to him that Celia was carrying his child.

‘However much I would wish it, my wishes come secondary for once!’ I wrote with a sweet little jest. ‘For Celia cannot travel, and the argument against her making the attempt is the only one that could stop me coming to you.’ Sufficiently winsome for anyone this, I thought, well aware that Harry might read it aloud to Mama, or Lady Havering. ‘I am deeply happy to be able to tell you that Celia is with child.’

I paused again. Celia’s health had to be sufficiently difficult as to prevent her travelling entirely, and yet not so frail that Harry felt her needs more pressing than Mama’s. I thought I could trust to Mama to keep Harry safe at home, but you never knew with my mama. She might be overwhelmed with tenderness for Celia and her unborn grandson and send Harry post-haste back to France in a spirit of inconvenient selflessness.

‘She is extremely well,’ I wrote, ‘happy in her mind and fit. However, she finds any motion of carriage or boat brings on severe nausea. The local accoucheuse – who speaks excellent English and is most attentive and helpful – advises us that Celia should not attempt any journey until she is past the third month of her time, when she anticipates the symptoms will have abated and we can come home.’