Meridon (Wideacre Trilogy 3) Read online

  ‘Now!’ he said. ‘I’ll guarantee to win a race against that racehorse of yours on this going!’

  I looked down at the path under the horses’ hooves. It was deep sand, dusty on top and thick. Very heavy going. A horse would have to have strong legs and sound wind to gallop far and fast on that.

  ‘A wager?’ I asked.

  Will laughed. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘I bet you a side-saddle (for I’ve found it already but it’ll have to be repaired for you) against,’ he paused – ‘now, what do I want?’

  His eyes twinkled at me. I found I was smiling back.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what you want.’

  His eyes were suddenly a little darker. ‘If you were an ordinary girl,’ he said, suddenly serious. ‘I’d ride a race against you for a kiss. That’s what I want from you!’

  There was a silence between us for a moment which was no longer playful, and I was not smiling.

  I was about to say: ‘But I am not an ordinary girl…’ when Will interrupted me before I could speak.

  ‘But since you’re not an ordinary girl,’ he said. ‘I don’t want a kiss from you at all. I’ll ask instead that you let me read you a pamphlet on corporations and corporation farming.’

  I choked on a laugh. Will was a rogue and a cheat – I suddenly thought how Dandy would have loved him and the familiar pain thudded into my belly.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked quickly as he saw my face fall. ‘What’s the matter, Sarah? It’s only a jest.’

  ‘It’s not that,’ I said. I struggled to find my show smile which can go on my face and hide everything, meaning nothing. ‘It’s nothing. A little pain in my belly.’

  His face was very gentle. He went to put a hand out to me but then he checked himself as he remembered that I did not like to be touched.

  ‘Well enough to ride?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh aye,’ I said, reining Sea in. ‘It’ll pass. And the bet’s on!’

  He said, ‘One two three and away!’ and I gave Sea his head.

  The race track was a wide white sand firebreak which wound for miles across the Common. I was in the lead as we broke out of the trees but the horses were neck and neck as we forged up towards a steady slope.

  Sea was panting, he hated heavy going, but the cob had a steady rolling stride which ate up the ground. As the hill got steeper the cob went ahead by a nose, and then by a little more.

  I raised myself up in the saddle and bawled at Sea, over the noise of the creaking leather and the thudding hooves and the flying sand, and he put his head down and went that extra bit faster. I guided him to the side of the path where the greening heather was a better foothold and his strong white legs reached forward, he put his heart into his speed and we forged ahead with a yell of triumph.

  ‘You win!’ Will shouted as the hill levelled out, and I pulled Sea up. He was panting, his flanks dark with sweat. ‘You win!’ Will said again. ‘And I’ll pay up, though riding on the edge of the firebreak is cheating.’

  I beamed at him. ‘I always cheat,’ I said. ‘Especially if the stakes are high.’

  Will nodded. ‘I should have known. What’s your game, Sarah? The bones?’

  I shook my head. ‘Cards,’ I said.

  Will chuckled and we turned the horses for home. ‘Where did you learn?’ he asked, entertained.

  The sun was warm on my back and I was happy to be out on the land. A cuckoo was calling loudly and contentedly away over to our right and some early gorse was making the air smell sweet. Will pulled his cob alongside Sea and we went along companionably side by side and I told him about Da and his cheating at wayside inns. I told him how I was taught, when I was just a little child, to go around the back of the card players and to see what cards they had and to signal it to my da. I told him how Da would tell me to fetch a fresh deck of cards from the landlord and how I learned to stack them in the right order to suit Da, whoever had the deal.

  ‘And did they never spot you?’ Will asked, amazed.

  I laughed at him for being a gull. ‘Of course they did, sometimes!’ I said. ‘I was only a little girl, my hands weren’t big enough to hide the stack. Mostly they didn’t. She was there too…’

  I broke off. I had been about to say that she was there too and she would sing, or do a little dance with her skirts held out, and that the men who were fools enough to play with Da were also fool enough to take their eyes off him when a woman, even a little girl, was up on a table where they could see up her skirt.

  I lost the thread of what I was saying and my face went bitter.

  ‘I can’t remember what I was saying…’ I said.

  ‘Never mind,’ Will said. ‘Perhaps you’ll tell me another time.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I said. I knew I never would.

  Will glanced at the sky. ‘About noon,’ he said. ‘I have to go up to the Downs later to check on the sheep. The lambs are with the ewes – would you like to ride up with me? They’re a pretty sight.’

  I was about to say yes, but then I remembered Lady Clara.

  ‘I cannot,’ I said. ‘Lady Clara is coming to see us this afternoon and I should change into the riding habit.’

  Will nodded equably. ‘I’ll take you home then,’ he said turning his horse’s head. ‘Can’t keep the Quality waiting.’

  ‘I’ll ride alone,’ I said. ‘I know the way.’

  Will paused, looked at me. ‘Pain bad?’ he asked, knowing with his quick cleverness that it had not passed as I said it would. He did not know, as I did, that this was a pain that would never pass. It was not a share of bad meat which was tearing my belly, it was the loss of her which hit me afresh, every time I laughed, every time I saw something which would have given her joy.

  ‘No,’ I said, denying his insight, and denying the comfort he might have given me. ‘I’ve no pain. But I can ride home alone and you can go to your work.’

  He nodded and held his horse still as I rode away. I felt his eyes on my back and I straightened in the saddle and even sang a little song which the wind would blow back to him and tell him that I was light-hearted. It was the song Robert used to order when he could get a fiddler to play the ponies in. It was a song from the show. My life was still all show.

  I rode home slowly, watching the high green horizon of the Downs and the little shapes of white which were Will’s flock of sheep moving slowly across it. The Downs were like a wall around this little village, they held it like you might cup your hand on something rare and strange like a butterfly or a tiny bright beetle.

  I passed some people on the Common, gathering brushwood and furze. They waved as I went past and called: ‘Good day, Sarah!’ and I smiled my empty smile back at them, and called back: ‘Good day,’ and thought that I had come a damned long way still to have no handle to my name.

  The path led me down to the back of the house and there was a little drystone wall which Sea popped over, hardly breaking his stride. A track led me to the back of the stables and I put him in his loose-box myself, he still did not like Sam. I was surprised that he let Will touch him.

  I was rubbing him down, hissing at him between my teeth, and he was turning his head and nibbling the top of my curls as I worked when I heard the noise of wheels on the gravel of the drive and peeped over the door to see a carriage turning in the gate.

  ‘Damme, it’s her la’ship,’ I said to Sea. ‘I hoped to be in a dress before she came.’

  I came out of the stables and watched the carriage draw up. I noticed the horses first. A pair of matching bays, very fine animals, well fed and with glossy coats. Their harness could have been better cleaned but the brass bits were shiny and bright. I nodded. I thought they had been made ready for a woman who liked the look of things to be right. The straps would wear out quicker for not being properly oiled but maybe she didn’t care for that.

  On the box was a driver in a bright ornate uniform, and behind the open carriage, looking like a pair of pouter pigeons, were a couple of f
ootmen in the same livery. The carriage stopped at the terrace steps and they flung themselves off the box, opened the door – showing the linings of the carriage of pale blue silk – let down the steps and put out a respectful hand for Lady Clara.

  She took her time. I came out into the yard to watch her. It was as good as a play. First she snapped her blue parasol shut, the footmen waiting like statues all the time. Then she loosened the veil which had gone over her hat to protect her from dust and pushed it back a little, then she stood up in the carriage, gave her skirts a little shake, and put out her hand to the footman who had been standing waiting, as if he could be there all day if she had a mind to it.

  At her first gesture towards him he leaped closer to the carriage and took her gloved hand on his arm as if he were honoured at the touch. Lady Clara took two tiny steps down the steps of the carriage and then paused at the foot of the terrace.

  Both footmen fell in behind her as she walked, slowly, slowly, like a mountebank preparing some trickery, up to the front door. Then she stood before the door in absolute stillness.

  The footmen waited. I waited. Sam, who had come out from the tack room, waited beside me. Then she slightly nodded her head and one of the footmen stepped forward and hammered at the front door as if he were going to beat it down for her ladyship to step over the ruins.

  It swung open at once and Mr Fortescue stepped out.

  ‘Lady Clara!’ he said pleasantly. ‘What a time it took you to manage the steps. Don’t tell me you are troubled with rheumatism? Come in out of the draught, do!’

  I gave a muffled shriek and ducked back into the loose-box to yell with laughter against Sea’s side. I thought James was no match for her ladyship, but as an opening attack it couldn’t be faulted.

  Sam looked at me dourly over the half-door as I snorted for breath.

  ‘Quality,’ he said, and spat on the cobbles of the yard.

  I made haste then and got indoors and up the back stairs and into the purple riding habit, then I went half-way down the stairs, thinking to join them. The parlour door was shut. I hovered, uneasy, on the stairs and then I heard Lady Clara’s tinkling empty laugh. I did not think I could interrupt them, and I didn’t know if they wished me there. In the end I waited in my room until I should be sent for.

  Becky came up after a while and asked would I go down and take a dish of tea with Lady Clara and James.

  I glanced at myself in the mirror. I had spent some time tying my hair back. The purple ribbon was twisted and looked like string, but at least my hair was not tumbling around my shoulders. I straightened my back and went down the stairs.

  Lady Clara was sitting at her ease in one of the parlour chairs with her tea cup and a little cake on the table beside her. She smiled at me as I came in, the smile of a woman who has everything she wants. I looked across at James. He looked irritable.

  ‘Ah Sarah!’ she said. ‘Your guardian and I have been discussing your education and prospects. Come and give me a kiss.’

  I went carefully over and pressed my warm cheek against her cool powdery one.

  She gestured to the chair beside her.

  ‘Your guardian fears I am about to kidnap you!’ she said smiling. ‘I have assured him we just want your company.’

  James nodded. ‘Miss Lacey has a lot to learn on her estate,’ he said. ‘She has been riding with her manager and she needs to learn to read the estate books.’

  ‘Certainly, certainly!’ Lady Clara said easily. ‘But she also needs dresses, hats, gloves, a hairdresser, a number of teachers, all manner of things so that she can be a Miss Lacey of Wideacre!’

  James stirred his tea and made a little clatter with the teaspoon in his cup. Becky passed me a cup and went out, closing the door softly behind her. I wondered if she was listening in the hall. I knew I would have.

  ‘Wideacre is not an ordinary estate,’ he said gently. ‘And Miss Lacey is not an ordinary young lady. She needs to learn and approve the plans for the land before anything else. There will be plenty of time for fashionable trifles later on.’

  Lady Clara raised her arched eyebrows in surprise. ‘Plenty of time?’ she exclaimed. ‘But the child is sixteen! When do you propose she should be presented at Court?’

  James blinked. ‘Court?’ he asked, and his surprise was real. ‘What should she want to go to Court for?’

  Lady Clara put her cup down and flirted her fan open. ‘For her London season, of course,’ she said reasonably. ‘She must have a London Season, and who is to present her?’

  James ran his hand through his hair. ‘I had not thought of a Season,’ he said. ‘It is hardly something which matters. The most important thing is to teach Sarah how to go along in the country, to learn her way around, to understand what is being done here on her land, and to prepare her for when she is twenty-one and comes into her own fortune.’

  Lady Clara laughed a delicious tinkling laugh.

  ‘The most important thing!’ she exclaimed. ‘Mucking about on a little farm!’ She broke off. ‘Oh! forgive me! I did not mean to be rude! But who spends all their life in the country except working people? You would hardly condemn Sarah to being stuck down here with some dreary little companion, I daresay, when she could be living the life of a young lady in London.’

  ‘It is hardly incarceration!’ James said heatedly. ‘She will come to love living here.’

  ‘You don’t live here,’ I observed. ‘You live in London!’

  Lady Clara flirted her fan to hide her face for a second and behind the shelter of it shot me a wink.

  James got to his feet and took a turn about the room. ‘Sarah!’ he appealed to me. ‘Surely you don’t want a life with the Quality in London. It’s not what you were bred to, you cannot wish it?’

  I looked at him thoughtfully. He had run my estate to favour the workers and to profit them. He had not claimed my rents as he should have done. He had not sought for me, and he had not found me. By the time I came here she was gone; and all the benefits of the life here could not help her.

  ‘I want the best,’ I said, and there was no softness in my voice at all. ‘I have not travelled this far and worked this hard to live a life which is second-best. I want the best there is. If that is London then that is what I want.’

  There was silence in the pink elegant parlour. James was looking at me as if I had taken some long-beloved dream away from him.

  ‘I thought that this would be the best for you,’ he said gently. ‘It would have been your mother’s first choice.’

  Lady Clara snapped her fan shut with a little click, got to her feet and shook out her skirts.

  ‘Well then,’ she said. ‘I must go, and we are agreed. Sarah may come and visit me while she continues learning her way around her estate, and I will advise her as to clothes and behaviour and how to go on. When you are ready to go back to London, Mr Fortescue, then Sarah can stay with me until the start of the Season. My lawyers will contact you with details of how her allowance should be paid.’

  She moved towards the door but James Fortescue made no move to open it for her.

  ‘Is this your wish, Sarah?’ he asked me again.

  I flared up. ‘For God’s sake!’ I exclaimed. ‘Haven’t I just said so?’

  Lady Clara tapped her fan sticks on her hand with a little click and I turned to her. ‘Don’t swear,’ she said. ‘Don’t raise your voice. Don’t answer a question with a question. Now try again.’

  I looked at her, my eyes blazing with temper at her, and at James Fortescue and at this whole world of choices and decisions where there was nothing and no one I could trust.

  Lady Clara looked back at me, her blue eyes limpid. She reminded me of Robert Gower, and how he trained me to his trade. Then I saw how she had got her way with James without raising her voice. You could use Quality manners as sharp and as hard as a honed knife blade. She raised her eyebrows at me, reminding me she was waiting.

  I turned to James and I smiled at him with no warmth i
n my face. ‘It is my wish to go to London for a Season,’ I said. ‘It is where I belong, I want to be there.’

  Lady Clara put her hand out to me and I walked with her to the carriage. ‘Well done,’ she said, when we were out in the hall, ‘You’re a quick learner. I’ll send Perry around with the carriage and he can take you for a drive this evening, then you can ride over to the Hall tomorrow and I will have a dressmaker from Chichester come to fit you. Perry will come and fetch you.’ She paused. ‘I think you and Perry will enjoy each other’s company,’ she said. Then she got into her carriage, spread her blue parasol, and was gone.

  24

  She was right. In the days that followed, Perry and I found an easy, undemanding friendship together, and the instant liking I had felt for him when he had come weaving down the road at his lame horse’s head grew almost without my knowing. He was the easiest man or boy I had ever known. He was never sour, he was never impatient. I never saw him anything but smiling and happy.

  His mother encouraged our friendship. When she wanted me to come to Havering Hall she sent Perry over to fetch me, rather than one of the footmen. When it grew late and I had to go home she would let me go on horseback if Perry was with me, she did not make me take a carriage. When she wanted to show me how to curtsey when a man bowed it was Perry who stood opposite me with his hand on his heart.

  He was seldom drunk as I had seen him on that first day. He was rarely unsteady on his feet, and if he had taken too much port after we had left him for dinner he was clever at concealing the fact that the floor was wavering at every step. If his mother was in the room he would lean nonchalantly against a chair, or sit at a stool at my feet. Only if he had to rise and walk would his look of owlish concentration betray him.

  I was not sure if she noticed. She was an inscrutable combination of manners and frankness. Sometimes Perry would say something which would amuse her and she would throw back her head and laugh. Other times her eyes, as blue as his but never as warm, would be veiled and she would look at us under her lashes as if she were measuring me. I did not think she missed much, and yet she seldom checked Perry, and I never heard her caution him against drinking.