Meridon (Wideacre Trilogy 3) Read online

  Sketches were loaned to me from the schoolroom and Lady Clara insisted that I squiggle my initials at the foot of them, and had them framed. They attracted much praise and I thought my modesty was particularly becoming. The embroidery which was cobbled together by the governess in the schoolroom as an extra unpaid duty I left scattered around the drawing room, and Lady Clara would sweetly scold me in front of visitors for not putting it away. My flower arrangements were done by one of the parlourmaids who had once been apprenticed to a flower-seller. Only my horse riding and my card-playing were entirely my own and they were skills from my old life.

  ‘Far too good for a young lady,’ Lady Clara said. She wanted me to ride a quiet lady’s mount and offered me a bay from her stables. But I held true to Sea and she sent down to Sussex for him. The stables were around the back of the house, down a cobbled street. Some afternoons, when Lady Clara was resting, I would wear a hat with a veil pulled down and sneak round to the stables to see him. I was not supposed to walk out without a footman, the horses should be brought to the door. But I did not trust the London stable lads to keep his tack properly clean. I was not sure they were reliable about his feeds and his water. To tell the truth, I simply longed to be with him and to smell him and to touch the living warmth of him.

  Lady Clara would have known within a few days what I was doing. She said nothing. I think she knew, with her cunning common sense, that there was only so much I could bear to be without. If I had to live without the land, without travelling, and without the girl who had been my constant companion since the day I was born, I had to find things which would make me feel as if I touched earth somewhere. Sea, and sometimes Perry, were the only things in London which seemed real at all.

  I was allowed out riding early every morning, provided I took a groom as a chaperone and did not gallop. When the clocks were striking seven we would trot through the streets which were busy even then. Down Davies Street, across Grosvenor Square which was dusty from the building work, and along Upper Brook Street to the park where the green leaves were looking dry and tired, and some of the bushes were yellowing at their edges. Sometimes the gate-keeper at the Grosvenor Gate lodge would be up, and tip his hat to me, more often only the groom and I were the only people in the park. There were ducks silent beside the still pond, there were great flocks of pigeons which wheeled around us. One morning I heard a low rushing creaky noise and looked up to see a pair of white swans circling the water and landing with a great green bow-wave of stagnant water cresting against their broad white breasts.

  On Wideacre at this time of year I thought the berries would be very bright and ripe in the bushes. The nuts would be in thick clusters on the trees. In the London park there was fruiting and nutting going on, but it seemed more like a diversion. It hardly seemed a matter of hunger, of life or death. The squirrels in the trees and the ducks by the reservoir seemed like stuffed pets, not like live hungry animals.

  The groom rode behind me at half a dozen paces, but I was as aware of him watching me as if he had been a gaol keeper. Sea longed for a gallop but I had to keep him on a tight rein. The noises of the city puzzled and fretted him, his ears went back all the time as we rode home through the crowded streets. When I rode him down the cobbled mews and left him in his stables I thought he looked at me reproachfully with his great dark eyes as if to say that the place he had found for us, that night when we had been quite lost, had been better than this. I would shrug as I walked home, as if I were trying to explain in my head that we had to be here. He had to live in a street filled with other stables where rich carriages and beautiful horses awaited their owners’ commands. Among all that wealth and elegance I could not understand why I did not feel triumphant. I had wanted the best, the very best. And now I had it.

  Perry would never ride with me in the early mornings. He was out too late every night of the week. Sometimes he went to gambling hells, sometimes he went to cock pits or boxing rings. Once he went to a riding show and offered to take me. I said I did not want to go, that his mama would not approve of me going, and he went alone. I did not even ask him who were the riders and what tricks they did.

  He did not rise until midday and would sometimes take breakfast with us dressed in a brilliant-coloured dressing gown. When his head was aching badly he would take strong black coffee cut with brandy. When he was well he would drink strong ale or wine and water. Whether he ate well, or whether his hands were shaking and his face white, his mama never seemed to notice. She read her letters, she chatted to me. One time he was swaying in his chair and I thought he might faint, but Lady Clara never said one word. She never tried to check his drinking. She seldom asked him where he had been the night before. He grew paler and paler every week of the Season, but Lady Clara seemed to see nothing but her own pretty reflection in the mirror over the mantelpiece; she watched no one but me.

  I met Juliet and her governess that first evening. She came downstairs to be introduced before dinner, but she did not stay to dine with her mama. She made her curtsey to me without raising her eyes, and when she was told that Perry and I were to marry and that she and I would be sisters she gave me a cold kiss on the cheek and wished me very happy.

  I made no effort to get on closer terms with her. I did not want a sister.

  Lady Maria arrived in a flurry of ostrich plumes the first morning after our arrival.

  ‘Expensive,’ her mama said coolly as she fluttered into the room. Maria kissed her and then stood back and twirled around so that Lady Clara might see the full effect of a blue velvet walking gown, blue jacket, blue hat and blue feathers with a dark fur cape thrown over the shoulders.

  ‘Vulgar,’ Lady Clara said simply.

  Maria laughed, not at all abashed. ‘Where’s the pauper-heiress?’ she demanded.

  Lady Clara frowned and affected deafness. ‘Sarah, may I present to you my daughter, Lady de Monterey. Maria this is Miss Sarah Lacey.’

  Maria gave me a gloved hand and a look as cold as ice. ‘I hear you and Perry are to be married,’ she said coolly. ‘I hope you will be very happy I am sure.’

  I smiled, as cold as her. ‘I am sure we will,’ I said. ‘I believe you are newly wed aren’t you? I’m sure I wish you very happy.’

  We stood smiling at each other as if we had lemon slices in our mouths. Lady Clara stood back as if enjoying the spectacle.

  ‘How is Basil?’ she asked briskly, pulling the bell pull for morning coffee.

  Maria unpinned her hat before the mirror and patted the tightly crimped blonde curls into place. She turned and made a face at her mother.

  ‘Just the same,’ she said. ‘Still working, working, all the time; just like a tradesman.’

  ‘A rather successful tradesman,’ Lady Clara said wryly. ‘He did not quibble about the price of that ball gown which you wrote to me about?’

  Maria beamed. ‘I slipped it in along with a whole lot of bills from his estate,’ she said. ‘Compared to a forest of trees which he is planting I am positively paltry.’

  Lady Clara smiled. ‘It would be as well not to play that trick too often,’ she warned. ‘You’ve only been married a quarter.’

  The maid set the coffee tray before me and then waited to pass the cups around when I had poured them. My hand was as steady as a rock and I did not spill a drop. Lady Clara was watching me from the corner of her eyes. Maria had forgotten I was there.

  ‘I’m flush now,’ she said airily. ‘I had this quarter’s dress allowance and I doubled it last night playing vingt-et-un at Lady Barmain’s. I had such a run of luck, Mama, I vow you would not have believed it! Four hundred pounds I won clear! You should have seen her ladyship’s face! She was nearly sick when I rose from the tables a winner. They say she rents her house on her winnings at the table, you know. I must have cost her a month at least!’

  Lady Clara laughed her sharp London laugh, and Maria told her some more gossip about people whose names I did not know, but whose vices and sorrows, drink or gambling or unf
ulfilled desire, were the same in high society as in a showground.

  I was surprised at that. In my first month in London my greatest lesson was that there was less difference than I had seen when I had been at the bottom, the very bottom of the heap of society looking up. I had been dazzled then by the cleanliness and the food they ate, at the fineness of the gowns and the way the ladies were so dainty, and dressed so bright. But now I too was washed and fed, and could talk in a high light voice as they did. I could curtsey to the right depth, I could spread a fan and smile behind it. I could mince across a room, not stride. They were all signals, secret code-words, as impenetrable as the signs of the road which tell you where it is safe to camp and where you can poach. Once I had learned them, I had the key to a society which was the same as that of a fairground: nothing more and nothing less. They were drunkards and gamblers, wife-beaters and lovers, friends, parents and children; just the same. The greatest difference between the world of the gentry and those of the landless was just that: land. When I had been on the bottom of the heap I owned nothing and they had taught me to think the worse of myself for that. The only thing which had brought me to the top of the world was land and money, they would forgive me everything if I remained rich. I would never have got beyond the area railings if I had stayed poor.

  And while I rode Sea on my lonely way in the park in the mornings, or watched dancers swirl around on the floor while the clock struck midnight and footmen yawned behind gloved hands, I recognized more and more that the wealth of the ballroom and the poverty of the farmyard were alike unjust. There was no logic to it. There was no reason. The wealthy were rich because they had won their money by fair means and foul. The poor were poor because they were too stupid, too weak, or too kindly to struggle to have more and to hold it against all challenges. Of the people I met every day, only a few had been rich for many years, the vast majority were quick-wined merchants, slavers, soldiers, sailors, farmers or traders only a generation ago. They had succeeded in the very enterprises where Da had failed. And so Da had grown poorer and more miserable, while they had grown rich.

  I did not become a Jacobin with these observations! Oh no! If anything it hardened my heart to Da and those like him. It strengthened me. I was never going to fall out of the charmed circle of the rich. I was never going to be poor again. But I saw the rich clearly, as once I had not. I saw them at last as lucky adventurers in a world with few prizes.

  And, by the way, for all the extravagant profits they made, the wealth they earned, not one of them worked half as hard as we had done for Robert’s show. Indeed few of them worked as hard as feckless, idle Da.

  It took me only a month to see through the Quality life and thereafter I was not afraid of them. I had seen Lady Clara condemn a woman for hopeless vulgarity and cite her bad connections, and yet include her on the guest list for a party. I learned that a great many mistakes would be forgiven me if I could keep my wealth. And all the little obstacles which they liked to invent: the vouchers for Almacks, the proper costume for presentation, the sponsor at court – all these things were just pretend-obstacles to weed out those with insufficient capital or land, to challenge those who did not have enough money for three tall ostrich-plumes to be worn once, for half an hour of an evening only, to complete the formal court gown.

  But I had enough money. I had enough land. And if I forgot how to hold my knife once or twice when I came across a new dish at dinner, or if I spoke a word out of place, it was quickly forgotten and forgiven to the beautiful rich Miss Lacey of Wideacre.

  They thought I was beautiful, it was not just the money. It was the fine clothes, and how I rode Sea in the park. The young men liked how I walked with them, long easy strides and not the hobbled minces of usual young ladies. They called me a ‘Diana’ after some old Greek lady. They sent me housefuls of flowers and asked me to dance. One of them, actually a baronet, asked me to break my engagement with Perry and become engaged to him. He took me into a private room as he led me back from the ballroom and flung himself at my feet swearing eternal love.

  I said, ‘No,’ brusquely enough and turned to leave but he jumped to his feet and grabbed me and would have kissed me. I brought my knee up sharply and I heard the hem of my gown rip before I had time to stop and think what a young lady should do. Lady Clara came spinning into the little lobby room in time to see him gasping and heaving on a sofa.

  ‘Sir Rupert! what is this?’ she demanded. Sir Rupert was white as a sheet and could only gasp and clutch his breeches.

  Lady Clara turned on me. ‘Sarah?’ she said. ‘I saw Sir Rupert take you from the supper room, he should have brought you back to the ballroom. What are you doing here?’

  ‘Nothing, Lady Clara,’ I said. I was scarlet up to the eyebrows. ‘Nothing happened.’

  She took me by the elbow and dragged me over to the window. ‘Sarah! Quick! Tell me what took place,’ she hissed.

  ‘He grabbed me and tried to kiss me,’ I said. I hesitated. I did not know how to tell her what had happened in genteel language.

  ‘And then?’ Lady Clara prompted urgently. ‘Sarah! The man is one of the richest gentlemen in England and he is rolling on the sofa in his mama’s house! What the devil has happened?’ She clutched my arm hard and her eyes suddenly widened. ‘Don’t say you hit him!’ she moaned.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I kneed him in the balls. He’ll recover.’

  Lady Clara let out a shriek of laughter and clapped her gloved hand over her mouth at once. ‘Never say that again,’ she said through her fingers. ‘We are leaving at once.’

  She tucked my hand under her arm and swept me from the room without pausing to say a word to Sir Rupert. She nodded regally to his mama from the other side of the ballroom but did not deign to bid her farewell. A surprised link boy was sent flying for our carriage. Lady Clara would not let me speak until we were in our own house with the door closed behind us, then she sank down into a chair in the hallway and laughed until she gasped for breath. When she lifted her head I saw her eyes were streaming.

  ‘Oh Sarah!’ she said. ‘I would not have missed tonight for the world! Never do that again Sarah! Scream or faint or have the vapours. But don’t do that,’ she paused. ‘Unless it’s a common man of course. But never attack anyone over the level of a squire.’

  ‘No, Lady Clara,’ I said obediently.

  She looked at me keenly and stripped off her evening gloves and smoothed the skin under her eyes. ‘Did he offer to marry you?’ she asked acutely.

  ‘Before he grabbed me,’ I said. ‘Yes, he did.’

  ‘But you are betrothed,’ she said.

  ‘I didn’t forget it,’ I said. ‘He asked me to break my promise to Perry and I said I would not.’

  ‘You prefer Perry,’ her ladyship stated.

  ‘Yes,’ I said truthfully. ‘I do.’

  ‘Even though Sir Rupert is good-looking and pleasant,’ she said.

  I paused. ‘He is,’ I agreed. ‘But I think Perry suits me better.’

  I would have said nothing more, but Lady Clara was curious.

  ‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Why Perry rather than Sir Rupert?’

  ‘Sir Rupert is passionate,’ I said. ‘He thinks he is in love with me. He would want his passionate love returned. I cannot do that.’

  ‘And Perry is content with nothing,’ Lady Clara said, her lip curled slightly.

  ‘Perry and I are friends,’ I said defensively.

  ‘You have never kissed, he has never touched you?’ Lady Clara asked.

  I felt myself blush slightly. ‘We neither of us want that,’ I said. ‘It is our decision.’

  She nodded. ‘Does he have a woman?’ she asked. She rose from the chair and slung her fur wrap down and went to the stairs.

  ‘No!’ I said, surprised. I had thought of Perry for so long as a man quite without desire that I was almost shocked that his mother – whose view of him was so acute – should have thought him capable of having a mistress.

  Sh
e paused, one delicate satin-shod foot on the lower step. ‘I suppose he can get an heir?’ she asked crudely. ‘He’s not impotent, d’you think, Sarah?’

  My face was as hard as hers. ‘He knows his duty,’ I said. ‘He knows he has to.’

  Her face softened and she smiled. ‘That’s all right then,’ she said, as if the inheritance were all that mattered. ‘Good-night, my dear.’

  I said good-night and watched her as she went lightly up the stairs to her room and shut her door.

  I thought of the show and of the women I had seen with Da. Of Zima and of Katie the whore. And I thought that never in my life had I seen a woman as beautiful and as cold-hearted as the woman who was to be my new mama, when I married her son.

  The late nights did not make me weary. I woke every morning when the clatter of the street outside my bedroom started, and the day after the ball was sunny and I was glad to be up early and take Sea out to the park.

  The weather was getting colder. I shivered as Sea trotted down the cobbled road towards the park. The groom beside me had a blue muffler around a blue chin and looked as if he would have preferred another hour in his bed.

  Sea’s ears were back, as they always were when we were riding in town, but they suddenly went forward and he gave a ringing neigh of welcome as a square figure on a heavy bay horse pulled up as if waiting for us at the end of the road.

  ‘Will Tyacke!’ I declared, and my heart lifted with delight.

  He was beaming, his face bright with joy at seeing me, and I reached out my hand to shake his. If we had not been on horseback I would have flung my arms around his neck and hugged him.

  ‘How are you?’ he said at once. ‘How are they treating you here? You look pale, are you happy here?’

  I laughed and put my hand on his shoulder. ‘Stop!’ I said. ‘I am quite well. I was out late last night so perhaps I do look tired, but I am happy enough. Is everything all right on Wideacre?’