Philippa Gregory - The Favoured Child

‘Do,’ he said. ‘I’m tired of seeing you in that dull black gown all the time. And the fatter you get the worse it looks.’

I checked on my way to the door. It must have been my condition and the fact that I had just woken, but the hardness in his voice made tears start in my eyes. With Mama gone, and Ralph gone, I could not bear it if Richard was in a mood to bully me.

‘Oh, Richard,’ I said reproachfully. ‘I am not fat , it is just the shape of the baby. It is just a large baby.’

Richard stood astride in front of the fireplace. The flickering flames made his shadow leap, large as a giant, on the wall behind me. ‘Well, you look damned fat to me,’ he said cruelly. ‘Run and see Mrs Gough and then put on a proper evening gown, and wear some jewellery to set it off. We’re dining at home, after all, and Dr Pearce won’t mind.’

‘I don’t really have any jewellery,’ I said in a low voice. I was thinking of Mama’s rose-pearl necklace which the highwayman had taken. She told me that she would leave it to me in her will. And now she was dead, and the necklace was probably in some horrid little shop pawned for drink, and I would never see it, or my mama, ever again.

‘Wear that nice shiny watered silk anyway,’ Richard commanded. TU come up to your room when I’m washed and changed.’

I nodded, as humble as a drudge, and slipped out of the room. I spoke to Mrs Gough and saw her explode into a frenzy of activity. By the way she clattered the pans I knew she would produce a dinner fit for a table of princes, but in the meantime the kitchen was an unsafe territory.

I went upstairs and called Jenny to help me wash. I missed my hot baths, but since my belly had grown so broad it was impossible for me to fit into the tub. Now I stood upright while Jenny tipped water down over my shoulders and let it cascade off the bump of my belly into the hip-bath.

‘You surely have your dates wrong, Miss Julia,’ she said. ‘Such a big child as it is. It surely will be soon.’

‘No,’ I said. I could hardly have my dates wrong with that May Day morning in my mind. ‘It will not be born for another two months at least,’ I said. ‘It is due at the end of January. I have all of December to get through yet.’

She shook out the black silk gown and helped fasten the buttons at the back. It was rather grand for a dinner party at home with no one invited but the vicar and his friend, but I might as well wear it as Richard had requested. I would not have another chance. No one else visited us in the evenings, and Richard and I never went out to dinner. The roads were so bad, the nights were so dark, and everyone in the county knew that I was pregnant after a marriage which had been announced almost as the baby started to show. I was not disgraced – my grandmama had seen to that – but we certainly were not the most sought-after couple in the county.

That would be remedied when the spring came and we could drive out and around visiting, when the baby was born, and when our great new house was roofed and nearly ready. I had learned enough in Bath to know that no one would ignore us when the estate grew more profitable and we moved into the big house and employed dozens of servants and went to London for the season. I thought for a moment then of what that season would be like with Richard at my side, without my mama to help me, without my girlhood friends to greet me.

Without James.

I shrugged. There was an ache in my heart, a steady constant ache in my heart. I was in mourning for my mama. I was in mourning for the death of my girlhood and the loss of the only man I would ever love. I was happy to wear black, and if I wanted to wear my black evening dress, it would have to be at home. It might as well be tonight.

‘Lovely,’ said Jenny. ‘Just lovely, this dress, Miss Julia.’

I turned and looked at myself in the glass. The deep lustre of the watered silk made my face look shadowed and remote. The folds spread evenly across the front of the high waist concealed the pushing weight of my belly. The only indication of my pregnancy was my plumper breasts, which were pressed into two rounded half-moons at the square neck of the bodice.

I stepped closer to the mirror and looked at myself curiously.

I saw again the girl who had been called the prettiest girl in Bath. In my sadness for my mama, and my loneliness, in my mistrust of my body which had so betrayed me with its fertility, I had forgotten that I was a beautiful girl. But in this hard autumn I had become a beautiful woman.

The curves of my breasts were a sensual promise; even the shifting sliding hints of the prow of my belly were a proof of sweet fertility. The dark mysterious silk accentuated the slimness of my back and the creaminess of my skin, and put shadows in my grey eyes. I smiled at my reflection in genuine surprise. The fine clear lines of my cheek-bones, the lilting upturned corners of my mouth were familiar, but the shadows in the eyes were new, and it was these which had transformed me from a promising girl into a beautiful and desirable woman.

‘You do pay dressing,’ Jenny said. ‘Shall I do your hair?’

‘Yes, please,’ I said, and I sat down at my mama’s dressing-table and watched my face in the glass as she brushed out my light curling hair in long sweeps from the top of my head down almost to my waist, and then started to pile it up in gentle folds.

Behind her, in the darkness of the room, reflected in the glass, I saw the door open and Richard come in. He did not realize I had seen him, for he was watching Jenny carefully brushing and lifting one swath of thick hair after another. There was an expression on his face which made me give a little shiver, although the room was warm. I wondered, even as the hairs all down the nape of my neck lifted in a shuddery life of their own, what imaginary shadow had crossed my mind.

He moved, and Jenny jumped and gave a little squeak. ‘Oh! I beg your pardon, sir, I did not know you had come in!’

I heard a note in her voice I had never heard before, and I said nothing for a moment while I considered it. Then I recognized that slightly too quick speech, that slightly too high pitch. She was afraid of Richard. The whole household, the village and the estate were afraid of Richard. And I – his wife, his dependant -I was afraid of him too.

He smiled. ‘You can go now, Jenny, if your mistress is finished with you.’

I nodded my head, not turning from my place before the mirror, and Jenny bobbed a curtsy with her hand held to her neck in an odd gesture, strangely protective of her throat. Then she took herself out of the room. Richard walked towards me and stood behind me, where Jenny had stood brushing my hair. I met his eyes in the mirror, and I wondered what he wanted of me.

‘I like that gown,’ he said. His fingers brushed my neck, the smooth sloping naked line from my shoulder up to the exposed lobe of my ear. I shivered at his touch and I could see in the mirror that the pupils of my eyes had enlarged, making my eyes darker.

‘I have brought something for you,’ Richard said softly. ‘Something I know you will like.’

He smiled.

I considered that smile, watching his face in the mirror which had once reflected my Mama. It was not the smile he used to hide his anger, so I should have nothing to fear. It was not the smile which was his genuine laughing smile. It was affectionate, tender. But there was some joke at the back of it which I thought I would not enjoy.

I nodded warily.

Richard lifted the flap of his pocket and delved in its depths. His jacket was black velvet, his linen cream lawn; the pocket flap was trimmed with black satin ribbon. I was watching his reflection in my mirror so carefully that I noticed how the sheen on the ribbon caught the light from the candles on either side of my mirror.