Philippa Gregory - The Favoured Child

‘I hope you will like it,’ Richard said sweetly. His voice quavered on a little giggle of suppressed laughter. ‘Indeed,’ he said, his voice shaking, ‘I know you will like it!’

My eyes flew to his reflected face in my mirror. His eyes were dancing with boyish merriment. Then I felt the cool touch of a necklace around my throat.

The cool touch of rounded perfectly matched pearls.

Rose pearls.

Mama’s rose pearls.

Mama’s rose pearls, which were taken by the highwayman who shot her and left her to die on the highway.

I put my hand up to touch them as if to confirm that they were real. I could not believe they were real. I had not thought to see them ever again.

‘How well they suit you,’ Richard said pleasantly. There was a ripple of amusement under his voice. ‘How pretty you look in them, my dear.’

My eyes met his, my grey level stare to his dancing blue twinkle.

‘Mama’s pearls,’ I said, prosaically.

‘Mama’s pearls,’ he confirmed. The joy never left his face. ‘Or, at any rate,’ he amended, ‘something very like them.’

There was a noise of carriage-wheels outside as Dr Pearce and his friend arrived.

‘Early!’ Richard said, crossing to my window to look out. ‘Come then, Julia!’ He held out an imperative hand to me as I sat frozen at the glass.

For a moment I thought I could not move. I sat in silence and looked at Mama’s rose-pearl necklace and at the matching earrings which Richard had tossed down before me.

‘Oh, yes!’ he said, following my gaze. ‘Put the ear-rings on too! You can’t imagine the trouble I had getting them!’

It was that nonchalant mention of his trouble in getting them that tipped me from my frozen crystal of disbelief into a well of horror which I recognized.

At last I knew the horror for what it was: Richard’s murderous madness.

Richard’s hand was held out to me, and Dr Pearce was knocking at the door. I was a woman entirely dependent on one man, that man my brother, seven months pregnant with his child, without a friend in the world who could help me stand against him.

I knew him then as Clary’s murderer, the entrapper of Matthew Merry, the betrayer of Ralph Megson, the murderer of Jem the groom, of his own papa, John MacAndrew, and of my beloved mama.

I looked at him as if I had never seen him before; but there was no fear on my face. I was beyond fear, in a pit of such horror that I could think nothing and say nothing.

Mechanically I pushed the studs of the ear-rings through the little holes in my ear-lobes.

They stung.

Then I took Richard’s hand and went down the stairs with him to greet Dr Pearce and Mr Fowler, and sat at the foot of the table, with my husband at the head, while Stride served a dinner of which I could be proud.

Afterwards we played cards, and Dr Pearce and I won. We took tea and then the two of them went home. Richard and I were alone in the parlour.

‘It’s good to have company,’ Richard said, yawning. ‘We spend too much time alone. It will make you dull, Julia. You were blooming tonight.’

My hand was at my throat on the necklace. Richard glanced at it.

‘It’s remarkable how well those pearls set off your skin tones,’ he said. ‘They make you look like a bowl of warm cream.’

He put out his hand to me to help me to my feet, and out of habit, before I could think what I was doing, I let him pull me up out of the chair and found myself standing close beside him on the hearthrug.

His hand came down under my chin and lifted my face up. For no reason he squeezed my chin until I could feel the strength in his long fingers, killer’s fingers. The blood drummed in my head, but I did not speak and my grey eyes on his face never wavered.

‘I think I shall come to your room tonight,’ he said with a little sigh. ‘I think I should like to lie with you.’

There were a few moments of utter silence while my reeling head tried to take in what he was saying.

‘You cannot!’ I said stupidly. ‘Richard! You are my brother!’

Richard’s hand left my chin and lingered on my bare shoulder, caressing the slope of my neck, one finger negligently trailing down to touch the warm rounded top of my breast.

‘Oh, I don’t regard it,’ he said idly. ‘It was just something they said to frighten us.’

‘No,’ I said. I tried to step back, but Richard’s other arm was around my waist holding me tight beside him. ‘No, they meant it, Richard. It was the truth, I am sure of it.’

I was still not afraid – I was too stunned to be afraid. My brother, and the killer of my mama, had me held tight to his side and was stroking my breast and my neck with confident, bloodstained fingers.

‘I don’t regard it,’ Richard said again. ‘I do not think we need regard it. They will not be saying it again, after all!’ He gave me one of his most charming smiles, as if that were the wittiest sally he could make, and he put one hard finger under my chin and tipped my face up to receive his kiss.

In the pit of madness which was all that was left of my will, there was nothing to stop him. His mouth came down upon mine and I gritted my teeth to stop myself retching, and I put my hands on his waist to hold myself steady while the world reeled around me.

‘Whore,’ he said gently, and put me from him. ‘Go and get into bed. I shall have you tonight.’

My will was broken and my mind was dead.

I went up the stairs to my bedroom for there was nowhere else I could go. Jenny Hodgett undressed me in silence and looked anxiously at my face so pale that it was deathly. I slipped between the sheets of my bed and blew out my candle. Then I lay in the half-darkness with the firelight flickering on the looming furniture of the room; an owl was calling and calling outside.

He was late coming to bed. In my strange calm state I even dozed while I waited for him. I was afraid no longer. I had lost my fear. I was not a virgin – I did not think it would hurt. I could not cry for help and shame Richard, and shame our family name, and shame myself. When he pulled the covers roughly off me, I lay as still as a corpse. Only the little hairs on my arms and my legs lifted and prickled at the cold night air. But I held still.

The bed dipped with his weight as he came in beside me. His night-time candle showed his face still rosy and young. There was the smell of spirits on his breath – brandy. His hair smelled of cigar smoke.

He was at a loss to know how to begin. I opened my eyes and looked at him steadily, expressionless, not moving. He fidgeted with the things on my bedside table, shifted the glass of water, knocked over the little wooden owl Ralph had given me.

‘D’you remember Scheherazade?’ he asked unexpectedly.

I held my face blank, but my mind was racing.

‘You really loved her, didn’t you?’ he asked. His voice was a little stronger. It held some resonance of his old childhood hectoring tone. ‘You were heartbroken when she was killed, weren’t you, Julia?’

My silence irritated him.

‘Weren’t you?’ he demanded.

‘Yes,’ I said. I was unwilling to speak and I did not know why he asked. ‘Yes,’ I said.

‘You cried for her,’ Richard reminded me. ‘And yet you could never really believe that Dench had cut her.’

I sighed. It was all such a long time ago and the losses then had been mere forerunners of what came later.

‘Yes,’ I said.

Richard rolled on to one elbow, the better to see my face. ‘The horse was cut, then they smashed her in the face with a hammer,’ he said. ‘And Dench was sacked and had to run for his life. Remember? If Grandpa Havering had caught him, he would have had him hanged for sure.’