Wideacre

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His eyes on my face were bright. He was in love with me and with my land, a heady mixture for a labourer, the son of a labouring man. But the bleak reality of my life away from Wideacre as it must be, as it was bound to be, was a stark contrast to this dream future that Ralph saw, that Ralph thought we could win: as Lady of Wideacre.

‘My father looks well,’ I said drily.

There was a long pause as our eyes met in clear mutual knowledge of how far we were prepared to go to achieve Ralph’s dream, my dream.

‘There are accidents.’ Ralph’s words fell into a silence as ominous and deep as the still millpond. Like a stone tossed in deep water the idea spread widening ripples in my mind. I measured the appalling loss of my beloved, my delightful, papa against the certainty of my loss of Wideacre.

The precious, essential presence of my vital, noisy papa against the certain loneliness and coldness of my exile, which would come as surely as my sixteenth birthday would come, and at much the same time. I looked at Ralph unsmiling.

‘Accidents,’ I said flatly.

‘It could happen tomorrow,’ he said, as cold as me.

I nodded. My mind searched like a skilled spinner over a tangled skein of wool to find the ideas and threads of ideas that would lead me through a maze of sin and crime, and out of the maze into the broad sunshine of my home. I measured in silence how much I needed my papa against how much I needed that security; considered Harry’s infatuation with Ralph and how far it would lead him. Thought of my mama and how the loss of my father would make me more vulnerable to her, but ever and again came back to that picture of me in a comfortless northern castle far away from the land where I belonged, pining my heart out for the sound of a Wideacre morning. Always seeing my papa’s profile as he turned his face from me to watch his son. He had betrayed me before I ever dreamed of betraying him. I sighed. There could only ever have been one answer.

‘It could work,’ I said again.

‘It would work now,’ Ralph corrected me. ‘Harry could change in a year, in a couple of months. If he is sent away to prepare for university we will both lose our hold on him. It would work only this summer. It would work tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow?’ I said with a flash of irritation. ‘You say tomorrow. Do you really mean tomorrow?’

Ralph’s dark eyes were black with the knowledge of what we were saying.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I do.’

I gave a gasp. ‘Why so soon?’ I said in instinctive fear. Yet my heart had leapt at the thought of moving quickly, of securing my future in an instant; of making something happen at once.

‘Why wait?’ said Ralph with cruel logic. ‘Nothing will change for me. I trust your mettle, Beatrice. If you are for Wideacre, if you wish to live there, if you are as determined as I think you are – why wait?’ His eyes were narrowed, measuring me, and I knew that together we were an explosive combination of elements. Without me this plan would never have been in his mind. Without me it could not have worked. Without his urgent pressure I could not have gone ahead. We led each other on like a pair of falling angels spinning down into hell. I breathed a deep sigh to slow the pace of my heart. The river bubbled neutrally beneath us.

4

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I woke with a jolt in the pearl-grey light of a summer dawn and knew that today I had to do something – that I had woken myself early because I had something to do. But for a few dozy, sleep-drenched moments I could not for the life of me recall what it was. Then I gave a little gasp as yesterday came back to me – bright as an enamelled picture – Ralph and me sitting with the Fenny flowing beneath us, talking madness, talking death, talking treason.

Ralph had caught me while I was off balance; he had touched me on the raw of my jealous, exclusive heart, which says – which always said – ‘Love me. Love me only.’ The sight of my papa loving someone else, choosing another to ride with him, to chat with him, to run the land with him, had thrown me into such churning rage that I simply wanted to lash out – to hurt everyone as much as I was hurt. If I could have dropped Harry dead to the ground with a wish, I would have done so, for usurping my place with Papa. But the deep core of my resentful grief was directed against the father who had turned against me, the fickle and worthless man, after I had loved him without fail and without faltering for all of my life. It was his lack of fidelity to me that laid me open to any alliance. It was his failure to honour the love and trust between us that sent me spinning, rootless, amoral, into the world where any chance thought or vengeful plan could catch and hold me. It was as if I had sworn him fealty and he had broken his oath as liege lord. Disappointment and grief were the least of it – I had been betrayed.

And Ralph had made my counter-attack sound so easy. Ralph had made it sound so gentle. Ralph had made it sound so sensible. A well-schemed, cool-headed plan anyone would be wise to undertake. So logical that I could not fault it. It would work. It would give me what I needed – Wideacre – and it would revenge me for the pain my papa had caused me.

I shook my head on the pillow in the grey light of my white-washed bedroom. I had been mad for a few seconds there, back on the tree trunk with Ralph’s persuasive voice gentle in my ear. I had been mad to listen and doubly mad to appear to consent. The thought of my papa in pain and realizing at last that he needed me was a sweet picture. The thought of him magically gone, and Harry magically gone, leaving me alone, in sole control, was another fine picture. But I was not fool enough to think such things could happen because I willed them. They were the dreams of a hurt child. I had been dangerously close to believing them.

To set such a course in motion was madness, and yesterday I had been mad with my jealousy and fear of the future. But today, with the dew falling and the sun not yet hot and the birds not yet singing, was another day. As soon as the servants were up and had unbolted the kitchen doors I should slip down to Meg’s cottage in the woods and tap on Ralph’s window and tell him I did not mean it. I would not have long to wait for they work long hours in the kitchen and the youngest maid would be stoking the kitchen fire and bringing in the logs in less than an hour. Until she opened the back door I could not get out without leaving an unbolted door behind me, and that would lead to questions that might take some answering. I had only to wait a few minutes, slip on some clothes, tiptoe downstairs and slide out while her back was turned. If Ralph had been out for poachers last night I might even meet him on his way home.

I snuggled a little lower under the covers, relishing the warmth in the knowledge that in a few moments I would have to leave the cosy softness of my bed and get dressed in a cold room and washed in cold water. I would set things right with Ralph and we would think of some other way. Perhaps things would come right of their own accord. If Harry left early for university, or even went to stay with some of Mama’s family for a few weeks, I would have the time to win back Papa’s attention. He might turn from me now, but I knew in his heart he loved me. He would tire of Harry; he would tire of teaching him. He would want the wordless instinctive companionship he and I had developed over years of riding the land together. Then he would look for me, and I would be at his side, and Harry would be the one who was left out and unwanted. Comforted by the thought I dozed and woke to check the brightness of the window. I listened for the kitchen maid but there was no sound. It was too early. If I fell asleep I would wake the moment I heard the back door open or the girl bring the logs in. I dozed, then I slid into a deeper sleep.

I awoke with a jump to see my window bright with early morning sunshine and my bedroom door opening as my maid brought in hot water for me to wash and an early morning cup of chocolate.

‘You slept late, Miss Beatrice,’ she said cheerily and clattered the cup at my bedside table. I threw back the covers and ran to the window. It was full day.

‘What time is it, Lucy?’ I asked urgently, splashing water on my face and throwing off my shift.

‘Eight o’clock,’ she said, as if it did not matter. As if it did not matter at all.

I gasped. Pointless to reproach myself for oversleeping on this one vital morning. ‘Help me,’ I said peremptorily. ‘I’m in a dreadful hurry.’

She moved like a dolt but I was dressed in minutes and racing down the stairs to the hall. No need for the kitchen door; the front door stood wide open. I caught sight of my papa eating his breakfast as I dashed past. He called good morning to me and I called back but did not stop. There still might be time to catch Ralph.

There still might be time, I thought as I ran, through the rose garden, through the little gate, across the paddock, the burrs catching at my long skirt, which I held bunched up in one hand. Then I was in the wood and settled down to a steady pace along the riverbank. A hundred things could delay Ralph at home and make him late setting out today. If he had been out late last night he might oversleep as I had. If he had stayed out all night he might now be having breakfast before going out again. He might still be out and on his way home. Or – and I had some faith in this – he might know, as lovers and young people often do know, that I was desperate and anxious; he might be waiting for me because he could somehow sense my urgency to see him, to tell him I had changed my mind, that I had been mad for a few moments – for an afternoon and a night only! – and that I knew now, as I had always known really, that of course my papa was sacred. On his own land he was the Squire and could not be touched. As my papa he was my dearest love – dearer to me than my own life I thought. What I said against him was spoken out of grief and hurt. I had never meant it for more than one foolish afternoon and one night.

My breath was coming in gasps and my tight-fitted dress was soaked with sweat under my arms and down my back but I did not dare stop. I thought I was as fit as a hunter in training but I was hampered by my skirts and by the rough ground under my boots. And it is a long way. But I did not dare stop. At this very moment Ralph might be pulling a jacket on, reaching for his cap and going out into the woods where I could not find him.

I had not asked him for a plan so I did not know, had no idea where he would then go. How he planned to meet my father, how he planned to do the act to which I consented – but did not mean. So I gasped at the burning pain under my ribs and panted for breath but ran on. It was like one of those nightmares when you run faster and faster but can get no purchase on the earth. My beloved Wideacre earth seemed to be turning to clay underneath my boots and though my legs were running I could feel that I was slowing, slowing; that my strides were not so long, that they were not so quick. I was losing time because I could not run, because I could not fly, and every second that passed might make the difference between seeing Ralph at the edge of the wood at the back of his cottage – or not seeing him at all.

I burst into the sunlight by the little cottage, speechless with lack of breath, banged through the garden gate and staggered, half drunkenly, up to the front door. I thumped on it with both clenched fists, then doubled up on the threshold whooping for breath, near sick with the strain of running so hard and so far. I heard footsteps inside and I felt dizzy with relief that I was in time. It would be all right. I had caught him, and the madness of yesterday’s conversation would be something we would both laugh about in a few moments. When he would say, ‘You did not think I really would have?’ and I would be able to laugh and laugh and say, ‘No, of course not.’ The door opened, and there was Meg.

‘Meg!’ I said, my face aghast, peering past her into the gloom. ‘Where’s Ralph?’

‘Gone out,’ she said, her dark eyes blank to conceal her curiosity, her face impassive at the sight of the Squire’s daughter, wet with sweat, hair down her back, gasping on the doorstep.

I gaped at her as if she had signed my death warrant. Death indeed. Death I thought it was.

‘Where?’ I asked. I was still panting and could say only one or two words.

She shrugged, still carefully incurious. ‘Into the woods,’ she said. ‘Towards the common, I think.’

I put my face in my hands. I could not think. I had been so sure that if I had run without pausing, had punished myself with such a merciless pace, I would certainly catch him. Or that he would somehow know. That, in any case, the dream of a vengeful child does not become reality. That I could count on the world’s not being such that if I wished something it would happen.

Meg left me abruptly and came back with an earthenware beaker filled with water in her hand. I took it and drank it without seeing or tasting. I had overslept. I had run as fast as I could. But Ralph had gone.

The sun was hot on the side of my face; I could feel sweat on my scalp and my face was wet with it. I sat numb and unmoving and cold with horror.

‘Did he take his gun?’ I asked, my voice bleak.

‘No, nor the dogs,’ Meg replied, nodding towards the two of them tied up by a shack that was their kennel.

No gun. My mind seized on that like a hopeful omen. Perhaps it meant he had known when he woke this morning, as I had known, that it was all madness, all folly. That we had been talking, as children will talk, about what they would like to do. Or what they would do if they could. He had not taken his gun. Perhaps he had just gone out to check the traps. Perhaps my father was safe.

My father.

I suddenly realized that my father could be perfectly safe. Ralph was somewhere out there, but inside the house my papa was utterly secure. With me, he was absolutely safe. Indeed, if he was with anyone Ralph would not touch him, but leave the execution of the plan for another day. Ralph would certainly come home this afternoon or evening. I could see him then and tell him that I had changed my mind. All I had to do was to ensure that my papa did not ride alone today. And I could do it by merely asking if I might ride with him. He was safe. And I could save him.

‘Tell Ralph I want to see him urgently,’ I said peremptorily to Meg. I got to my feet and found I swayed a little with dizziness. I ignored it and went through the garden and back to the path along the riverbank where I had dashed in such terror only a few minutes before. My breathing was back to normal and I walked briskly, the sun shining in my face. I walked a little faster. Worry snapped at my heels like a black dog. I had left my papa at breakfast and he had the morning papers; the post had not yet come. I could be fairly sure he would not have finished his meal by the time I got back to the Hall. Or could I? I quickened my pace a little, my heart thudding faster again, not at the speed but at the dawning of fear.

He would almost certainly wait for his letters. He might even be waiting for me to return. With a little luck I should walk up the path through the rose garden and see him standing on the terrace, sniffing at the air and smoking a cigar with the morning paper under his arm. The thought of him there was so clear in my mind I could almost smell the blue cigar smoke drifting on the air. I dropped into a trot. He was there, I had a certainty he was there. Looking at the roses, wondering what took me out of the house in such a tearing hurry, and waiting for the boy to come back with the mail from the early coach from London. The trot speeded into a run. I knew he was there, but I had been so frightened today that I wanted to see him. I wanted to race up to him, even hot and dishevelled and sweaty as I was, and feel his strong heavy arm around me in a hard hug, so I could know for certain, know for sure, he was safe. That I could not possibly harm him. Even if I had wanted to. I had a sharp pain under one of my ribs that made every breath a little gasp as a red-hot needle pricked me with each step. And I could feel an ominous tightening in my calf muscle. Although I knew, I knew, he was safe, it seemed some sort of magic that I should run as fast as I could. I was not in terror for him, but I would not feel easy until I saw him, until I could take his arm and say, ‘Today, I shall ride with you all day.’ Or even say to stupid Harry, ‘If you are riding with Papa today you must be with him all the time, and you must promise that.’ Harry would promise, and Harry would keep his word. So my papa was safe. I just needed to see him.

I was running as fast as I could again, and the bushes were tearing at my skirt and the noise from the Fenny, rippling beside the path, was as loud as the thudding of my heart, and the thundering of my boots on the soft earth. I raced over the fallen tree that made a bridge to the paddock gate, tore it open and banged it behind me. With sweat in my eyes I could not see the terrace clearly and the run had given me dancing flecks before my eyes as if I was looking through a veil. Papa was on the terrace, I was sure of it. I could not see him, but I felt he was there. There safe. And Ralph might wait in the woods all day and it would not matter.

At the gate to the rose garden I blinked to clear my eyes and scanned the front of the house. I could not see him, but the front door stood wide open; he might that moment have gone back inside for another cigar or another cup of chocolate. I trotted along the flagged path, looking towards the front door, expecting to see him at any moment, strolling out into the sunshine unfolding the paper and heading for one of the stone seats. I was up the steps and into the hall so quickly I was blinded by the darkness after the brightness of the sun outside.

‘Where’s Papa?’ I asked one of the maids, a tray in her hands, coming from the breakfast parlour.

‘Gone, Miss Beatrice,’ she said, dipping a curtsy. ‘Gone out riding.’

I stared at her disbelievingly. This could not be happening. All there had been was one little rolling pebble of an idea and it was growing and growing into what threatened to become an avalanche.

‘Gone riding?’ I said incredulously.

She looked at me a little oddly. Since Papa rode every morning of his life my tone of horror must have sounded strange.

‘Yes, Miss Beatrice,’ she said. ‘He left about a quarter of an hour ago.’

I turned on my heel then and went to the front door. I could have called for a horse from the stables and ridden desperately down the drive, or spent the day chasing round the estate looking for Ralph or for my papa, or for both of them. But I felt like a sailor must when he has been throwing ballast over the side, and pumping out water, and yet still the ship is sinking. The luck was all against me today. It might be the luck was all against my papa also. He had ridden out this sunny morning on to his land where a murderer might be waiting for him. And there was nothing I could do. Nothing. Nothing. Except protect myself. I slipped up the stairs to my room like a shadow. I wanted to wash and change before I met Mama or Harry. What was happening out there in the woods was beyond my control, beyond my responsibility. I had helped in the germination of a deadly seed. But it might not grow. It might not grow.

That afternoon they brought my father home. Four men shuffled slowly and stiffly at the four corners of one of the withy fences we use for penning sheep. It was bowed in the middle under his weight, and the weave was splitting. He lay on his back. His face was crumpled like a ball of parchment. The real person, my beloved, vigorous, spirited papa was gone. All they brought home to Wideacre was a heavy bundle.

They carried him through the front door and across the hall, their dirty boots marking the polished floorboards and the rich carpet. The door to the kitchens banged and half-a-dozen white faces peered. I stood motionless, holding the door as they carried him past me. There was a great crater of a wound on the side of his skull. The father I had adored was gone.

I stood like a tree frozen in mid-winter as they shuffled past me so slowly. They crept past as if it were a dream and they were wading thigh-deep in thick water. They dragged their feet as if we were locked in a nightmare and they wanted me to see the dreadful wound in my papa’s head. The great, deep gash half into his skull, and inside the great hole some grainy mess of bones and blood.

And his face! His face was not like my lovely papa at all! His face was a mask of horror. His brave, bright, laughing face had gone. He had died with his teeth, yellowish, bared on a scream, and his blue eyes popping at the sight of his murderer. The colour had gone from him and he was as yellow as the sandstone of the Hall. He was a statue of horror in Wideacre stone, and the withy fence bowed under him as if the very wood could not bear the burden of this death.

The slow, clumsy march of the men passed me at last and my father’s unseeing, staring blue eyes passed by me and were gone, no longer meeting my blank gaze of terror. Every step of the great staircase creaked as they humped their burden up to the master bedroom, and somewhere in the house I could hear the nagging noise of someone crying. I wished I might cry. I stood unmoving in the brightness, still holding the door, staring unseeingly at the shaft of sunlight shining on the polished floor where the mud from their boots was drying. Outside, waiting, were half-a-dozen of our tenants, the men bareheaded, the women with their aprons to their eyes.

They said his horse must have thrown him. He was found dead beside the little wall separating the park from the farmland on the northern boundary. The horse, unhurt, was grazing near by and the saddle was pulled round as if the girth had been too loose. He had set the horse at the wall and then tumbled off on the Wideacre side. The unwanted, inescapable picture of Ralph hiding in the lee of the wall and then reaching up to grab the horse’s reins and to club my father with one of the stones from the wall came to my mind unbidden. The only comfort I could find was the idea that my father had died on the park side of the wall, under the trees he loved, on the land he loved. But there was no other comfort for me.

Ralph had done this. Ralph had committed this assault. This filthy attack. This dark wicked sin. While my mama wept and wept easy tears that cost her little, and Harry wandered round the house in a haze of shock, I found my mind clearing and sharpening to a point of utter hatred. Ralph had done this thing. He alone was responsible.

Aye, I had been there, on the tree trunk spanning the river. My lips had met his. I had said, ‘Accident’, and ‘It would work’, but I had not known it would be like this. I had agreed. But I had not known what I was setting in train. Ralph had known. Ralph had knifed deer, skinned hares, hand-chopped rabbits. Ralph knew all about death and he invited my consent to his dark plots while I was a mere child. I had not known. I had not understood. And when I did, it was too late. It was not my fault.

I did not wish my father dead! I wanted him to turn to me again with his blue eyes bright with love. I wanted him to insist once more on my company when he was rounding up sheep. I wanted him to call for me as easily and naturally as whistling his dogs. I wanted him to forget Harry and Harry’s claims to the land. I wanted Harry to slip from his mind again, as Harry had gone once before. I wanted to be first in his heart again and first on Wideacre, and safe in his love and safe in the land.

Now Ralph had killed him and my papa would never love me again.

But Ralph had done worse. He had forgotten the divide. There was a gulf between Ralph and me he had forgotten. I never took him to my papa’s bed; I never took him inside the Hall. He was not Quality; he was not fit to wear linen. Homespun, Ralph was, and his mother wore rags. And this lad had dared, he had dared to lie in wait for my bright-brave Squire papa and leap on him like a thief and bring him down. And my papa had died in pain and terror at the hands of his false servant.

Ralph should pay.

While Harry’s grief and sense of loss grew, and he daily came to me for instructions and advice, and while Mama’s slight tears dried and she busied herself with ordering gloves, mourning favours, mourning clothes, and funeral plans, I stayed dry-eyed and burning with hatred.

Ralph should pay.

No man touches a Lacey of Wideacre and escapes. No Lacey of Wideacre ever fell without a sword to defend him. If I could have had Ralph arrested and hanged I would have done so. But he might have accused me and I could not bear to have such horrors spoken aloud. The death of my papa was not my plan. The murder was not my act. I did not order it. Ralph carried me along towards it because I did not know what it meant. Now every day the memory of my father’s silently screaming face would come before my eyes and the only way I could blot out that horror was to say silently, reassuringly, to myself, ‘Ralph will pay.’

At the funeral service my eyes behind my dark veil were black with hatred for the murderer and I said not one prayer. No Christian God could play any part in this blood that called for revenge. The Furies were after Ralph, and I was coming for him as deadly as any vengeful, thirsty goddess, hot with hatred, riding a wave of dark will.

My hatred made me sharp and cunning and nothing of my thoughts showed in my face. When the earth thudded on the lid of the coffin I drooped against Harry as if I were not rigid with anger and strong with hatred. We held hands in the coach on the way home and my grip was gentle and tender. I would be saving Harry too when I wiped out this killer, this deadly parasite on our land.

Mama was weeping again and I took her hand in mine. She was cold and she did not return the squeeze I gave her. She had been withdrawn ever since the slow shuffle of feet of four men bringing Papa home, and now and then I would feel her eyes fixed on me as if she did not see me, or as if she was looking through me to some speculation of her own. Now, through the black mesh of her veil, her eyes met mine with an unusual sharpness.

‘You know your papa’s hunter, Beatrice,’ she said suddenly in a clear voice, quite unlike her usual tentative murmur. ‘How could it have thrown him so? He never fell in year after year of riding. How could he have fallen, and fallen so badly, at such a little jump?’

My hatred of Ralph kept my own conscience clear, and I met her eyes directly.

‘I do not know, Mama,’ I said. ‘I suppose it may have been his saddle slipping. I have thought of nothing else, and of the pain he suffered. If it were the horse at fault I should order it to be shot. I would not suffer an animal to live which had injured my papa. But it was just a tragic accident.’

She nodded, her eyes still on my face.

‘There will be many changes now,’ she said. The carriage rocked as we turned right up the drive. ‘The estate is entailed on Harry, of course. He will have to get a bailiff to run it for a while. Or do you propose to help Harry?’

‘Of course I will help all I can,’ I said delicately. ‘We never have had a bailiff and Papa thought they were not a good idea. I would prefer if we could manage without. But that is a decision for you, Mama … and Harry.’

She nodded. There was a pause. The horses’ hoofs were muffled where the drive was carpeted with autumn leaves.

‘The only thing Beatrice loved more than her father was his land,’ said Mama, musingly, gazing out of the window. Harry and I exchanged a startled glance. This vague, seer-like voice was so unlike Mama. ‘There never was a girl who loved her father as much as Beatrice, but she loved the land, Wideacre, even more. If she had been forced to choose between them I think she would have chosen the land. It will be a great consolation to Beatrice to think that although she has lost her papa she still has Wideacre.’

Harry’s shocked blue eyes met mine.

‘There, there,’ he said feebly, patting Mama’s black-gloved hand. ‘You are upset, Mama. We all loved Papa and we all love Wideacre.’

Mama turned her gaze from the tall trunks of the trees and the fields and stared at me as if she would read the very depths of my soul. I met her eyes look for look. It was not my crime. I need take no blame for it.

‘I shall help Harry as much as I can,’ I repeated steadily. ‘My papa will not seem so very far away. I shall do what he would wish. I shall be the daughter he deserved.’

‘There, there,’ said Harry, deaf to all meaning, but catching the tone of my voice. He reached out his hand to me and his other to Mama. Handfast we arrived outside the Hall and sat for a moment in silence. I swore once more, before I let their hands go, that Ralph would pay for the injury he had done us all. He would pay at once. He would pay that night.

My papa’s will was read that afternoon. It was the straightforward work of an honest man. My mama had the dower house and a fair income from the estate for her life. I had a substantial dowry in money invested in the City, a home on Wideacre until my brother married, and then with my mother wherever she might choose to live. I kept my eyes on the table at this easy disposition of me and my love for the land, but my colour rose.

Harry inherited, by unquestioned right, all the fertile fields, the rich woodland and rolling downs. And if he died before providing an heir, the whole lovely land would go intact to the nearest male relation, as if I had never been born. My entire family, Papa, Mama and Harry, could all die in pain and horror and still I would be no nearer to the ownership of the land. There was a barrier against me no skill of mine could overleap. Generations of men had built defences against women like me, against all women. They had ensured we would never know the power and the pleasure of owning the earth beneath our feet and growing the food that went on our tables. They had built a great chain of male control, of male power and beastly male violence between me and my need for the land. And there was no way, enforced by male-dominated laws and male-established tradition, that I could overthrow them.

His father had served him well. Harry took the land, the produce of the land and the joy of ownership. His to enjoy, to use, to exploit or to abuse as the whim took him. There were no surprises in such an inheritance, and no sense in any heart (except mine) that what seemed so fair on the surface was part of a conspiracy to defraud me of my beloved home and to exile me from the one place on earth to which I could ever belong. My home was given away to the male newcomer, to the male stranger; he neither knew the land nor loved it, and yet it was his.

I heard the will read in a haze of hatred. Not towards Harry, who benefited despite his doltish silliness, but towards Ralph who had cost me my papa in return for this pittance of a dowry and this treasure for Harry. Harry had everything. I had lost the love of my papa, who would never have let me go, unhappy, into exile. And Ralph’s foul scheming had benefited only Harry.

After the petty bequests and little gifts, there was a personal message from Papa to Harry, exhorting him to care for the poor of the parish: standard rhetoric that no one would take seriously. But then Papa had written, ‘And I commend you, Harry, to take care of your mother, and my beloved daughter Beatrice – most dear to my heart.’

Most dear to his heart. Most dear. The tears, the first since his death, stung in my eyes and I choked on a great sob of grief that seemed to be tearing its way out of my chest.

‘Excuse me,’ I whispered to Mama and rose from the table and hurried from the room. In the open air on the front steps my sobs were stilled. He had called me ‘beloved’; he had told them all I was ‘most dear’. I breathed the smells of a late summer twilight and felt an ache like an illness, which was my longing for him. Then I walked bare-headed through the rose garden, through the little gate into the paddock and towards the wood down to the Fenny. My papa had loved me. He had died in pain. And the man who had killed him still lived on our land.

Ralph was waiting for me at the old mill. He lacked his mother’s gypsy second sight and he did not see his death when it walked towards him, smiling. He held out his arms to me and I went into his embrace and let him hold me and kiss me in the dark shadows of the barn.

‘I have been longing for you,’ he whispered in my ear as his hands moved quickly over my body, opening the front of my dress. I sighed as he smoothed my breasts and he bent his head and kissed me. His stubbled chin scratched my cheek and then my throat as his head dropped down the open gown. I shivered as I felt his warm breath on my neck.

Above us the last late swallows lined up on the old beam. I saw and heard nothing but the dark outline of his head and the steady, rapid sound of his breath.

‘Oh, it is so good to touch you,’ Ralph said earnestly, he pressed me backwards to a heap of straw and lifted my skirts and petticoats.

‘When we have each other and Wideacre, that will be a pleasure, eh, Beatrice? When we make love as man and wife in the great master bedroom at Wideacre? When I come to you like this, in the great carved bed under embroidered quilted covers and between fresh linen sheets like I was gentry born and bred?’