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I was ready, but I could not make a start. It was hardly reticence, but I could not find in myself the necessary confidence or the necessary mania to do it. In this thing I was serving Harry’s peculiar tastes and not my own more simple ones. I needed an event to spur me on to action. Even when Celia came downstairs to breakfast too late to pour my coffee, with shadows under her eyes but with a smile like a happy child, I still made no move. A week passed and I was ready, but still unready. Then Harry said to me at supper, ‘May I speak with you afterwards, Beatrice? Will you sit with me while I take port?’
‘Certainly,’ I said with equal formality. I waited while Celia and Mama withdrew from the room and took the seat at the foot of the table. The butler poured me a glass of ratafia and set the decanter of port at Harry’s hand, and left us.
The house was quiet. I wondered if Harry remembered another evening, like this one, when we had sat in silence as the house creaked and the flames flickered and died in the stone fireplace, and we had melted into each other on the hard wooden floor. But then I saw the smile on his boyish mouth and the happy clear eyes, and I realized he did not remember at all. It was other kisses and another body that warmed him now. His lovemaking now took place in the Master’s bed; our passionate, furtive exchanges belonged to the past.
‘I have to speak with you about something which makes me very happy,’ said Harry. ‘I do not think it will come as a surprise to you. Actually, I do not think it will come as a surprise to anyone.’
I turned the delicate stem of the glass between my forefinger and thumb, my mind blank.
‘Dr MacAndrew has approached me, as the head of the house, for my permission to ask for your hand in marriage,’ said Harry pompously.
My head snapped up, my green eyes blazed.
‘And you said?’ I shot the question at him.
He stumbled in his surprise. ‘I naturally said “Yes”, Beatrice. I thought … we all thought … I was certain that …’
I leaped to my feet and the heavy old chair scraped the polished floor.
‘You gave your consent without consulting me?’ I said, my voice icy but my eyes green fire.
‘Beatrice,’ said Harry gently. ‘Everyone has seen how you like him. His profession is unusual, of course, but he is of excellent family and his fortune … is remarkable. Of course I said he could speak to you. Why ever should I not?’
‘Because he has nowhere to live!’ I blazed out, my voice almost a sob. ‘Where does he propose I should live, may I ask?’
Harry smiled, reassuringly. ‘Beatrice, I don’t think you realize how very, very wealthy John MacAndrew is. He plans to return home to Edinburgh and I believe he could buy all of Holyrood Palace for you if you had a mind to it. He certainly has the money to do it.’
My mind, ice-sharp with anger, caught at once at the crucial point. ‘So I am to be married and packed off to Edinburgh!’ I said, outraged. ‘What of Wideacre?’
Harry, still confused at my rage, tried to reassure me. ‘Wideacre will survive without you, Beatrice. You are all a Squire could be, and more, God knows, but this must not stand in your way. With your life and happiness taking you away to Scotland, Wideacre is the last thing you should have on your mind.’
If I had not been in such a blind rage that made me want to shriek and weep I should have laughed aloud. The idea of my life taking me to some pretentious town house in Edinburgh or my love for some sandy-haired stranger taking me from Wideacre was comically funny – if it had not been stark horror. All horror.
‘Who knows of this plan?’ I said, fiercely. ‘Mama?’
‘No one, except myself,’ Harry said, hastily. ‘I spoke first of all to you, of course, Beatrice. But I believe I may have mentioned it to Celia.’ His half-smile revealed that my future exile had been the topic of some marital chit-chat in the master bed.
‘But I had no idea, Celia had no idea, that you would be anything but deeply, deeply happy, Beatrice.’
His voice, so controlled, so soothing, so much the chocolate smooth voice of powerful men who marry, and bed, and dispose of women down the long centuries, while women wait and wait for land, snapped the remainder of my control.
‘Come with me,’ I ordered, and grabbed a candelabra from the dining table. Harry exclaimed, looked around for rescue and seeing none followed me. In the hall we could see the parlour door ajar and hear Mama and Celia’s gentle voices as they sewed the altar cloth. I ignored it and turned to the great sweep of shallow stairs, Harry following, bemused but obedient. I led him up the first, then the second flight, then up the narrow stairs where my candles were the only dipping, flickering light.
We reached the locked door to the west-wing store room.
‘Now wait,’ I said and unlocked the door with the key from my pocket and left him standing outside without even a light. In haste I slid from my evening gown into the green riding habit I had worn as a girl when Harry had first come home from school and caught me, on that hot afternoon, naked on the floor of the old mill barn. The long line of buttons down the close-fitting jacket I left open from throat to navel. I was naked underneath. In my hand I held Papa’s old hunting whip – a long black thong of leather coiled wickedly and efficiently, the handle black ebony with silver inlay.
‘Come in,’ I said in a voice Harry would not dare to disobey.
He pushed open the door and gasped as he saw me, tall and angry in the flickering light of the candles. He gasped again when he took in the deep shadow down the front of my gown, and the saddle rack, and the hooks on the wall, and the sensuously cushioned divan and the scatter of thick sheepskin rugs.
‘Come here,’ I said. My tone cut him like a knife. In a trance he followed me to the hooks on the wall and when I tapped his legs with the crop he straddled so I could tie both ankles with the leather thongs. Speechless he spread his arms out while I tied him by the wrists – tightly and painfully – to the hooks.
One hard pull and his fine linen shirt was ripped to the waist and he flinched and stood half naked before me. With my bare hand I double-slapped him across the face; left-right-left-right and then, like a stable cat, I scratched his chest from his throat to the belt of his breeches with the sharp fingernails of both claw-like hands. He slumped on his bindings and groaned. It sounded as if he were really hurt. I was filled with deep gladness.
I took Papa’s old hunting knife and slit the seams of Harry’s fine embroidered evening breeches so they hung in tatters from his waist. The blade had nicked his skin on one thigh and when I saw the welling drop of blood I kneeled and sucked it as hungrily as any vampire. If I could have bled every ounce of his male pride and his folly and his power from him, I would have done so. He groaned, then straightened up again, straining against the ties as if he wanted to be free. I stepped backwards and with one expert flick uncoiled the whip so the thong squirmed on the floor towards him like a snake ready to strike. Then I raised it.
‘Understand this, Harry,’ I said, and my voice was clear with hatred. ‘I am never, in all my life, leaving Wideacre. I am never, in all my life, leaving you. We are together for ever. While you are the Squire of Wideacre you have me as surely as you have the land. You forgot that, and that is why I am going to punish you. I shall punish you in such a way that you will never forget and it will be a drug and a longing to you which you will never rid yourself of.’
Harry gasped as if to speak, to beg against the sentence, or to beg for it. I neither knew nor cared. I raised my arm and cracked the whip.
Papa had taught me how to handle a whip in the stable yard when I was ten. With skill and practice you can pick a strawberry without bruising it, or break the hide of a bull. I used Papa’s whip to slap Harry hard on the tender skin under the arms and down the flanks of his sweaty, trembling body, and then to tease and caress him around the throat, down his panting chest and barely to graze him between his straddled legs.
‘Go to the rack,’ I ordered. I untied him and he fell in a heap at my feet as soon as I loosened his wrists. I kicked his ribs without hesitation in one abrupt uncaring move. ‘Go to the saddle rack,’ I repeated.
He fell on it as if it was his schoolboy bed, and laid his cheek on the smooth polished wood while I tied each wrist and ankle to one of the legs. Then I played the whip over his back and his buttocks and his thighs, so each touch was the lightest sting, but the repetition added to discomfort, then pain, and then to pink, stinging grazes.
I untied him again and he slid from the rack into a crumpled heap on the floor and put out one imploring hand to the hem of my skirt.
I loosened the skirt of the riding habit at the waist and dropped it beside him. His hand closed convulsively on the soft velvet and he buried his face it in with a half-sob. But I left on the short tailored jacket and my soft leather riding boots.
‘On your back,’ I said mercilessly.
Harry was far gone. He lay like a stranded whale, beached on a shingle spit of unnatural desire. Out of element, out of place, helpless and heaving; I dropped like a scavenging eagle on the burstingly hard shaft of his body and as he entered me he screamed one hoarse shriek of pleasure. His back arched as he pushed up to greet me, and the sore spots on his shoulders and ribs scraped against the bare floorboards and rubbed on the fleece rug. I stayed cool and detached in my mind, but somewhere in the depth of my body some unimportant private crisis of pleasure mounted and was satisfied. The clenching of my muscles as I took my way tipped Harry over the border of his ecstasy of pain and I felt his whole body shudder. His wriggles underneath my hard control became faster and more frenzied, then I saw his eyelashes close on his tear-stained cheeks and his mouth opened to give a great groan of release and pleasure. At that exact second I abruptly straightened up and lifted myself off him. And I slapped his rigid manhood with an open palm as if I was slamming an ill-trained dog to the floor. Harry gave a shriek of incredulous pain at the blow, and I saw that one of my rings had cut the delicate, bursting skin. A fountain of seed and blood, unwanted, rejected, spilled over his scratched, whipped belly, and he gave three great choking sobs of release and loss. I watched him bleed like a hurt virgin, my face as kindly as frozen marble.
I could hardly get up next day, I was so tired. The emotional strain, the great shuddery sexual tension and the effort of dominating and brutalizing Harry had worn me out. I took breakfast very late in my room, sitting up in my wide white bed, and then spent the rest of the morning at my desk at the sunny window of my office. I was supposed to be doing the accounts, but little work was done that day. In truth, I spent the time gazing unseeing out of the window with the picture of Harry’s agony and Harry’s agonized ecstasy before my eyes.
At midday the parlourmaid brought me some of the strong black coffee we had shipped home from France. On the silver tray was an extra cup, and Harry entered the room behind her. I must confess, he took me by surprise. I had hardly thought he would have the courage to assert himself, and so soon. He walked rather stiffly, but not so badly that anyone would notice who was not watching him like a newly trained sparrowhawk.
The maid poured the coffee and put mine on the desk by my hand, and then left us alone. I said nothing. My tiredness had vanished and I was as wary as a poacher – seeking gain and yet rigid with fear.
Harry put his cup down on the porcelain saucer with a high-toned click.
‘Beatrice,’ he said, and his voice was a sigh of exhaustion and obsession.
It was as if all the candles in my heart had been lit at once. I had him. I had him safe again. I need never again fear for my place at Wideacre. I had won the Squire to corruption and I had him tight in my net.
‘You treat me as if you hate me, but you don’t hate me, do you, Beatrice?’ His voice had a hint of a beggar’s whine. I guessed that this was the voice my clever Ralph would recognize. The voice the schoolboy Harry had learned at school when the hero Staveley had taught his little troop to fetch and carry and fag and fight for him. The voice Staveley had taught him to use when he begged for bullying, or beating, or little treats of reward. If I had known Staveley, or even if I had Ralph to advise me, I should have known better at this moment what I should do – whether to indulge or punish Harry some more. I awaited some clue.
‘I was wrong, I have been all wrong,’ said Harry like a whipped spaniel puppy. ‘But do not beat me again, Beatrice. I shall do better. I shall never offend you again.’
Harry, the Squire of Wideacre, as a whimpering child, made my skin crawl with revulsion. With a sudden stab of memory I remembered the disdain in Ralph’s bright black eyes when Harry knelt on the floor of the dusty barn and laid his cheek on Ralph’s bare foot. Of course Ralph had looked relieved that we should, so miraculously, escape discovery. But he also looked as I imagined I looked now, as if Harry were some obscene mistake of nature, like a three-headed calf. I saw before me the long years of running the Squire as a puling baby – and I longed for Ralph’s uncomplicated, dominating fresh lust.
‘You disgust me,’ I said, speaking the truth, which leaped unstoppable to my lips.
Harry gave a whimper and slid from the pretty salon chair to his knees on the carpet at my feet.
‘I know it. I know I do,’ he said miserably. ‘I cannot help it. I am bewitched, I think. I have been wrong all my life. Only you can save me, Beatrice – though it is you who have done the bewitching. I am caught in your snare and I am helpless before you. For God’s sake be merciful with me.’
I smiled, the easy cruel smile of this new role Harry had cast for me in his fevered, oversexed, over educated imagination.
‘You are mine for ever, Harry,’ I said. ‘Your rumblings with your little bride, your friendships with men, your love for Mama or your work on the land – none of these are the real life. The real life is with me in secret, in a private locked room that only you and I know about. And you will get to that room only when I bid you, for only I have the key. And there I will take you into pain and beyond pain. And we will never, ever part; for I do not wish to go, and you –’ I smiled down into his upturned white face – ‘you would die without this pleasure.’
He gave a sob and buried his face in my skirt. I touched his head with my hand as gently as our mama would have done and heard his sobs renew at my tenderness. Then I gripped on to the long blond curls and pulled his head up so I could look into his eyes.
‘Are you my servant?’ I demanded in a whisper like a shard of ice.
‘Yes,’ he said tonelessly. ‘Yes.’
‘Are you my slave?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then go now for I have had enough of you.’
I said it cruelly, and I turned back to my desk. He shuffled to his feet and walked slowly and painfully to the door. His hand was on the doorknob when I said, in the voice I use to call my dogs, ‘Harry!’
He turned quickly and awaited my pleasure.
‘You will behave at dinner as if nothing at all had ever happened,’ I said. ‘This is a life and death secret and your silly open face must not betray you, or you will be ruined. Do it, Harry.’
He nodded, like a pauper taking orders at the workhouse, and turned to leave.
‘And Harry,’ I said with a new, languorous note in my voice, little more than a whisper.
I could see his back tense like a shudder, and he turned again.
‘I will unlock the door of my secret room tonight, and you may come to me at midnight,’ I said, softly.
He shot me a look of speechless gratitude. Then I let him go.
I was still left with the problem of John MacAndrew and, to tell the truth, the problem of my pleasure in his company, which I was loath to lose unless I had to. One solution was obvious: an easy lie. That Harry had quite misunderstood me, and that I enjoyed his friendship but I feared we would not suit as a married couple. I sat, musing, facing my desk with the papers I should be checking piled under a heavy glass paperweight – a deep red poppy embalmed inside it. I played the scene over in my mind – my dignified regret at rejecting John MacAndrew – and I tried some of the phrases of maidenly modesty in my mind. But my serious face kept breaking into a smile. It was all such fustian! And clever, sharp John MacAndrew would see through it in a trice. I had to find some lie to turn him from his course of marriage to me, and my exile to Scotland. But I would never convince him that I liked him only as a friend when he could see, as everyone could see, that I had a quick smile as soon as I saw him, and that no one could amuse me as he did.
I did not ache for him as I had for Harry. I did not see him with my conscious mind suspended utterly by the power of my body’s feelings as I had with Ralph. But I could not help smiling when I thought of him and the idea of his kisses delighted me. Not in my dreams – for I never, ever dreamed of him – but in daytime reveries and in the pictures that came into my mind before I slept.
While I was still turning over in my mind what I could say to him, I heard the noise of a curricle and pair and Dr MacAndrew’s expensive carriage bowled up the drive and stopped, informally, impertinently, outside my window. He looked down from the high box-seat and smiled at me. I crossed to the window and flung it wide to him.
‘Good morning, Miss Lacey,’ he said. ‘I have come to kidnap you from your business. It is too lovely a day to waste indoors. Come for a drive with me.’
I hesitated. To refuse would be ungracious and would only delay the proposal if his mind was set on marriage. Besides, now the window was open I could smell the hot end-of-summer scents of full-blown roses and gillyflowers and stocks. In the woods, pigeons were cooing their hearts out and the swallows were swinging and swooping in the air in their last picnic before their travels. We could drive around to watch them breaking the turf in the rested fields to ready them for sowing.
‘I’ll fetch my hat,’ I said with a smile, and I swept from the room.
But I had not considered Mama. She met me at the great staircase, and insisted that I change into a pretty walking-out dress and not clatter about the country in my morning gown. While I fretted at the delay, Mama called her maid as well as mine and laid out a choice of gowns before me on the bed.
‘Any one, any one of them,’ I said. ‘I am only going for a drive to the fields with Dr MacAndrew, Mama. I’m not off to London for the season, you know.’
‘There is no reason why you should not look your best,’ Mama said with unusual force. And she chose for me a deep green gown, smart jacket and voluminous skirt, which would bring out the green in my eyes and show my clear honey skin to perfection. The little matching bonnet had a veil of green lace, which I complained gave me spots before my eyes but actually delighted me with the way it hinted at the brightness of my eyes and drew attention to my smiling mouth. Mama’s own dresser piled up my hair in fat coils and Mama herself pinned on the hat and pulled down the veil. Then she took both my gloved hands in her own and kissed me.
‘Go on,’ she said. ‘You look lovely. I am very, very happy for you.’
Not only Mama seemed to think I was off to hear a proposal. Half the household had found a job to do on the staircase or in the hall that morning, as I made my way down to the front stairs. Every one of them bobbed a curtsy or tipped a bow to me and they smiled as if the whole of Wideacre was in a conspiracy to see me wedded.
The front door was flanked by our entire staff of footmen and parlourmaids as if we were entertaining in state. Both halves of the great double door were flung ceremoniously open by the butler and, gawping out of the parlour window, as Dr MacAndrew handed me up, were Celia, Nurse and, of course, Baby Julia.
‘You’ve had a fine send-off this morning,’ he said teasingly, noting the flush of scarlet on my cheeks.
‘It’s more usual to wait until you are accepted before you make an announcement,’ I said acidly, my scene of maidenly refusal forgotten in my irritation.
He choked with laughter at my indiscretion.
‘Now, Beatrice, try for a little tone,’ he implored, and for all the world I could not check a laugh in response. But this was no way to lead up to a refusal – and besides all the house staff had piled out on to the terrace to see us go, and could see me driving away with my suitor with a smile on my face.
We swept down the drive at a spanking pace. He was driving his matched bays and they were fresh and going well. Although he held them to a trot on the twists and turns, I was looking forward to feeling the speed when we reached the road to Acre. The lodge gates were waiting for us opened wide, and Sarah Hodgett was there with a curtsy and a meaningful smile for me. I glanced accusingly at John MacAndrew’s profile as all the Hodgett family crowded out of the house to point and wave at pretty Miss Beatrice and her young man. John MacAndrew turned his head and grinned at me, unrepentant.
‘Not me, I swear it, Beatrice. So don’t look daggers at me. I said not a word to anyone save your brother. I imagine the whole world has seen how I look at you, and how you smile at me, and has been waiting for us while you and I are taken by surprise.’
I considered this in silence. I disliked the easy tone of confidence but I was interested in whether I was surprised at the proposal. I had been amazed at the day of the race, but I was even more disbelieving of my own behaviour now. Sitting up high on the box of his racing curricle, with a laugh trembling all the time on my lips and no words of refusal anywhere in my mind.
That I should refuse to leave Wideacre was, of course, self-evident. But I could hardly refuse him before he proposed, and every second the assumption that I would accept him, and even the impression that I had accepted him, seemed to be growing. John MacAndrew had been clever enough to let the proposal of marriage become an understood thing between us without chancing a refusal.
As we came out of the drive and into the lane he turned, not as I had expected towards Acre but right towards the crossroads where our lane meets the main road between London and Chichester.
‘Where do you imagine we are going?’ I inquired drily.
‘For a drive, as I told you,’ he said lightly. ‘I have a fancy to see the sea.’
‘The sea!’ I gasped. ‘Mama will have a fit. I told her I should be back for dinner. I am sorry, Dr MacAndrew, but you will have to go shrimping alone.’
‘Oh, no,’ he said coolly. ‘I told your mama we would be back after tea. So she will not expect us earlier. She agrees with me that too much desk work is bad for young women.’
I gasped again at this further evidence of John MacAndrew’s tactical flair. ‘Is my health suffering very badly?’ I asked sarcastically.
‘Indeed, yes,’ he said without hesitation. ‘You are becoming round-shouldered.’
I choked down a laugh – and then laughed out loud.
‘Dr MacAndrew, you are a complete hand, and I will have nothing to do with you,’ I declared. ‘You may have kidnapped me today, but I shall be more careful of you another time.’
‘Oh, Beatrice,’ he said, and he turned his face from the road to smile very tenderly towards me, ‘Beatrice, you are so very clever, and so very, very silly.’
That left me with nothing to say. But I found I was smiling into his eyes, and my colour was rising.
‘Now,’ he said, dropping his hands and letting the pair break into a smooth fast canter, ‘now we are going to have a lovely day.’
Indeed we did. His housekeeper had packed a picnic that a lord might have envied, and we dined at the top of the downs with all Sussex at our feet and God’s clear sky above us. My extraordinary performance of the night before dropped from my mind as if it had never happened and I revelled in the relaxation of being neither goddess nor witch but simply a pretty girl on a sunny day. After Harry’s frenzied worship, it was restful not to have to pretend, not to have to dominate. John MacAndrew’s smile was warm, but his eyes were appraising and quick. I should never have him grovelling at my feet in a wet heap of remorse and lust. I smiled at him in easy approval and he smiled back. Then we packed up the picnic gear and drove on.
We reached the sea at teatime. He had chosen the stretch of shoreline nearest to Wideacre – almost due south – where there is a tiny fishing village of half-a-dozen shanties and a most villainous-looking public house. We pulled up outside and John MacAndrew’s shout brought the landlord running, very surprised and very certain he had nothing in his house fit for the Quality. So, too, were we. But in the boot of the curricle was a complete tea service with the best tea, sugar and cream.
