The Favoured Child Read online

‘Not all the way,’ he repeated as slowly as if he were writing down my answer in a copy-book. ‘She did not walk all the way. So, Julia, did you trot?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said quickly. Too quickly. ‘I trotted her a little.’

  ‘You trotted,’ he repeated again. ‘Your first time on horseback and you trotted? A rising trot, Julia? Or did you just bump about, clinging on and hoping for the best?’

  ‘I trotted properly!’ I said, stung. ‘And I cantered too!’

  Richard’s head snapped up. His eyes were as black as the centre of a thundercloud.

  ‘You took my horse without my permission and you cantered her?’

  ‘Richard!’ I said desperately. ‘I had to! I had to! Dench told me to! He had to look for you and I had to call out Acre and come home and tell Mama. I could not refuse to go. Dench knew what to do and he ordered me!’

  There was an utter silence.

  ‘Dench, was it?’ Richard asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘You should have refused,’ Richard said, a little frown on his face.

  ‘I didn’t know what to do!’ I said. ‘I didn’t know what to do, Richard. Dench seemed to know what had to be done, so I did as he told me.’

  ‘He never liked me,’ Richard said, gazing at the blank wall at the foot of the bed, seeming to see Dench’s impassive face on the pale lime-wash. He was seeing again in his mind Dench’s stony face as he watched Richard struggling to learn to ride, and Grandpapa’s impatience. ‘Not from the first riding lesson. Not before. He never liked me. He wanted you to have Scheherazade from the start,’ he said reflectively, reviewing the scene in the stable yard and remembering Dench’s smile as I walked towards the mare. ‘Then he used the excuse of my accident to get you on her.’

  I said nothing. I knew it was none of it true. But the threat of Richard’s rage seemed to be passing away from me. I felt icy cold inside, and the thudding in my head, behind my eyes, warned me that I would have a dizzy nauseous headache unless I could get away at once from this stuffy room. I sat in silence on the window-seat, the cold pane of glass chilling my back, fearful to make a move in case Richard’s rage should come back towards me.

  ‘It’s Dench’s fault,’ he said.

  ‘Yes. Yes,’ I said, thinking only of my need to get away. Richard said nothing more, and I sat frozen.

  He turned and looked at me and I saw with relief that his eyes were a hazy blue, as if he were daydreaming, as if he were happy. He smiled at me, smiled as sweetly as the dearest of friends. ‘Don’t look so terrified, Julia,’ he said as if it were rather funny. ‘I’m not angry with you any more. I thought it was your fault. But I see now that it was Dench’s.’

  I smiled back, still wary.

  ‘You’re sure he ordered you?’ he asked. ‘You’re sure it was he who made you ride my horse? You didn’t think you would seize the chance selfishly for yourself?’

  ‘No! No!’ I said hastily. ‘It was all his idea.’

  ‘Good,’ Richard said, and smiled his seraphic smile at me. He put his right hand out to me and I reached forward and took it in my icy fingers. Obedient to his tug, I slid forward to kneel at his bedside and he put his hand to my face and stroked my cheek as gentle as a lover. Then he kissed my forehead, just where the headache was starting to thud, and at his touch I could feel my fear and strain melting away, and the beat of the pulse behind my eyes grow quiet again.

  ‘That’s better now, isn’t it?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said softly.

  ‘I hate it when we quarrel,’ he said, his voice low. ‘There is nothing worse in the world for me than when I think you have been selfish and ugly. You must love me like a true lady, Julia. You must be pure and unselfish.’

  I blinked back the tears in my eyes. ‘I do try,’ I said humbly. ‘I try all the time, Richard.’

  Richard smiled, his eyes warm. ‘I know,’ he said sweetly. ‘That is how it should be.’

  Then I laid my head on his pillow and smelled the sweet nutty smell of his warm body and his dark curly hair and felt such a peace between us.

  Richard was angry with me no more.

  3

  Richard’s convalescence from the fever and the mending of his collar-bone and arm progressed without any problems. The surgeon came from Midhurst again to make sure the break was healing and he told Mama he would not need to call again. Richard was irritable during the days when he was cooped up in his tiny low-ceilinged bedroom, but once he could come downstairs for his meals – looking very grand in Grandpapa’s old jacket for a dressing-gown – he became his old sweet-tempered self. I thought that his short temper over Scheherazade had come from the fever and the pain and the very great blow it had been to his pride that I should be seen riding a horse which had just thrown him.

  Bearing that in mind, I was discreet in my visits to the stables with crusts of stale bread for Scheherazade. I did not dream of riding her again, and I scowled at Dench when I met him chatting with his nephew Jem in our stable yard and he told me of a ladies’ saddle he had found which was being sold cheap.

  ‘I am not allowed to ride her,’ I said as I might have said,’Get thee behind me’ to my greatest temptation. ‘She is Richard’s horse, not mine.’

  ‘He can’t ride her,’ he said frankly. ‘He was always afraid of her, she was always unsettled with him. Tell him that you’ll ride her for him while his arm’s mending. Jem’ll give you a few hints on how to manage her.’ Jem beamed at me and nodded. ‘She needs exercising,’ Dench said. He made it sound as if I would be doing Richard a favour instead of giving myself the greatest joy I could imagine. ‘No horse likes to be neglected. She’ll get bored and fretty locked up in the stable all the time. Tell Master Richard that she needs to go out. He can watch you ride himself if it makes him feel any better.’

  ‘I’ll tell Mama she needs exercising,’ I said. ‘But I don’t know if I’ll be allowed to ride her.’

  ‘Pity,’ he said succinctly.

  Jem nodded. ‘You should stand up for yourself, Miss Julia,’ he said. ‘You’re the Lacey, after all.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘D’you want to lead her down to the orchard?’ Jem suggested.

  ‘Oh yes!’ I said. Jem turned to fetch her from the loose box and she came out in a rush. Dench stepped quickly aside and put a hand up for her head collar, but I stayed still. She stopped before me, as though it were me she had been in a hurry to see, and she dropped her lovely huge chestnut head to sniff at the front of my gown. I held her soft nose and laid my cheek along it.

  Then I saw a movement at the library window, and I froze. Richard was watching me. As soon as I saw him, I moved, instinctively, away from the horse, ashamed as if he had caught me rifling his possessions or reading his private letters. I lifted my hand in a little wave, but Richard did not respond. He stepped back from the window before Jem and Dench had turned to see who was there.

  ‘Richard was watching,’ I said feebly. ‘I won’t take her to the orchard, Jem. You do it.’

  Jem made a hissing noise through his teeth and clipped a rope on to the head collar. He and Dench exchanged one sour look, but said nothing.

  ‘I must go,’ I said, and turned away from the horse, the lovely horse, and went back to the parlour.

  It was a quiet day, like all the other days, and the only excitement of the afternoon came when Richard and I were playing piquet at the parlour table and I won one hundred and fourteen pounds in buttons. Richard declared himself bankrupt and ruined and tossed down the cards. He glanced across at my mama, sitting at the fireside, and asked her, as if he had just thought of the question, ‘Mama-Aunt, what is Lord Havering going to do about Dench?’

  ‘Dench?’ my mama repeated in surprise. ‘What about Dench?’

  Richard looked blank. ‘Surely he has been reprimanded,’ he said, bewildered. ‘After taking such dreadful risks with Julia’s safety that day?’

  Mama paused. ‘I was very shocked at the time,’ she said.
‘But when he brought you home, I was so relieved to have you safe that I said nothing. It was all such a rush!’

  ‘I would have expected you to be more concerned about Julia,’ Richard said, still surprised. ‘Didn’t she faint when she got home?’

  ‘Yes…’ Mama said.

  ‘If she had fainted on horseback, she could have fallen and broken her neck,’ Richard interrupted. ‘Dench should never have put her on Scheherazade. She could have been badly thrown. Scheherazade had just thrown me, and I had been well taught and riding for months.’

  Mama looked appalled. ‘I should have thought…’ she said guiltily. Then she turned to me. ‘But you seemed so confident,’ she said, ‘and you rode her so well! You could obviously control her. I just assumed you had been riding her around the paddock when Richard’s back was turned!’

  ‘No!’ I said at once. ‘I never did that. I had never ridden her before. Dench told me to get on her, so I did.’

  ‘It was very wrong to send Julia off on a big dangerous horse for her first ride alone,’ said Richard. ‘Astride too…and through Acre!’

  Mama frowned. ‘I have been careless,’ she said. ‘I did not think about it once I had you both safe home, but you are right, Richard. I shall speak to Mama about it.’

  She shook her head with worry and bent to snip a thread from her sewing. When she looked up, she smiled at Richard in gratitude. ‘What a good head of the household you are, Richard!’ she said. ‘You are quite right!’.

  I smiled too at the praise for Richard, and Richard sat back in his chair and beamed at us both with confident masculine authority.

  We saw Lady Havering the next day when she called on her way to Chichester to see if we needed any purchases. I saw Mama talking long and earnestly at the carriage window and I knew that Lady Havering would strongly disapprove of Dench for being careless with my safety; that she would be appalled to learn that I had been riding astride with my skirts pulled up, and through Acre too! I only hoped Dench had nothing worse to face than one of my grandpapa’s bawled tirades. I knew he would be utterly untroubled by that.

  But everything went wrong. Grandpapa was not at home, and in his absence Lady Havering ruled at the hall. She did not go to Chichester after hearing Mama’s complaint; instead she drove straight home to the hall, stiff-backed with ill-founded outrage. She drove straight to the hall and into the stable yard and turned Dench off. She gave him a week’s wages and no reference, and she would not hear one word from him.

  He packed his bags and left the room above the stables where he had lived for twenty years. He walked the long way back to Acre village, where his brother and his family lived, dirt poor. Then after dinner – rye bread and gruel – he walked up to the Dower House, where only recently he had driven the Havering carriage with Richard inside, and Mama had cried and blessed him.

  Stride was out, so Mrs Gough came to the parlour and told us that Dench was at the back door. Mama looked indecisive.

  ‘I hope he isn’t drunk and rowdy,’ Richard said apprehensively.

  That tilted the balance for Mama, and she went to her writing-box and wrapped a florin in a twist of paper. ‘Tell him that I am sorry he has been turned off, but that I can do nothing about my step-papa’s household,’ she said awkwardly. ‘Give him this from me.’

  ‘I’ll tell him,’ Mrs Gough said truculently. ‘The idea of dunning you in your own house!’ She stumped from the room, the coin clutched in her hand.

  Although the baize door to the kitchen was shut, we could hear her voice raised, berating Dench, and his voice shouting in reply. I looked at Mama. Her face was ashen and I realized she was afraid.

  ‘It’s nothing, Mama,’ I said gently. ‘Mrs Gough has a sharp tongue, and I dare say Dench is just giving as good as he gets. It’s nothing more than that.’

  ‘He’s a bitter man,’ Richard contradicted me. ‘I hope this matter ends here. I do not like the thought of him coming to the house, nor hanging around the village making trouble against us. Lord Havering says that Acre is a powder-keg of trouble-makers. Dench is just another one to add to the fuel.’

  The kitchen door banged loudly and I saw my mama flinch. But I was thinking of Dench, who had done nothing so very wrong and was now out of a job. He had to walk home again, all the way down the drive and the lane towards Acre, with his head down, watching the toes of his boots which would not last for ever with the walking he would have to do to find work.

  I excused myself from the room and slipped out into the hall. The front door was unlocked, and I threw on my cloak and let myself out. I could dimly see Dench ahead of me down the drive, walking back to Acre. Even at that distance I could see that his shoulders were slumped. His stride had lost its swing. I ran after him.

  ‘Dench, I am so sorry!’ I exclaimed. He had stopped when he heard me running after him, but at those words he turned homeward again and trudged on. I fell into step beside him. ‘When my grandpapa comes home, I shall tell him I was in no danger,’ I said. ‘My grandmama misunderstood what happened, and you know how strict she is about me.’

  He nodded. ‘No need for you to say nothing,’ he said fairly. ‘I’d never put you in the least danger. Your grandpa knows that. Her la’ship is right, I did not think about you riding astride. And I did not think about Acre. I’m damned if I know what she would have had me do. But I had no chance to ask that. No chance to tell her that I was anxious only to get them searching for Master Richard…’ He broke off. ‘When his lordship comes home, he’ll find me a place,’ he said. ‘But it’s a poor return for twenty years’ work.’

  ‘I am sorry,’ I said again. ‘It isn’t fair.’

  ‘Aye,’ he said, the first edge of bitterness in his voice that I had ever heard. ‘It’s never fair for those at the bottom. I know who I have to thank for this. I’d rather that horse had dropped dead when Master Richard took his tumble than all this bother. And my sister having to feed me with a houseful of hungry mouths of her own…You’d not understand,’ he said. ‘Go home, Miss Julia. I don’t blame you.’

  I stared at him and had no answer. Then I nodded, unsmiling, and turned back for my home, and the candlelit parlour, and the card game.

  But I did not forget that he and Jem had said that Scheherazade needed exercise, and when Richard and I were on our way to our beds that night, I stopped him at the foot of the flight of the stairs which led to his bedroom.

  ‘Richard, would you mind if I asked Mama if I might walk Scheherazade in the paddock and perhaps down the drive and in the woods a little? Not proper riding, of course, just walking her. Jem said this morning that she would need to be walked out until you are ready to ride her again.’

  Richard’s face was shadowy in the candlelight. ‘Would you like that?’ he asked.

  Oh, yes,’ I said, but I was cautious. ‘If you would not mind. Not otherwise.’

  ‘Would you like to learn to ride her properly, perhaps? I could teach you while my arm is getting better.’

  ‘Richard! Would you?’ I exclaimed, and I grabbed his sound hand so the candle bobbed ad the shadows grew and shrank wildly. ‘Oh! I should so love that! Oh, Richard! I knew you would let me ride her! Oh, Richard! you are such a darling, darling, darling to me! And when your arm is better, perhaps my grandpapa will find us a pony for me to ride and we can go out riding together every day. And we can learn to jump! And…oh, Richard!…perhaps he would take us riding to hounds! And we could be famous as neck-or-nothing riders like your mama!’

  Richard laughed, but his voice was strained. ‘All right! All right! No need to set the house afire!’ he said. ‘And mind my bad arm! Don’t hug me, whatever you do!’

  I stepped back and did a little dance on the spot in delight. ‘Oh, sorry!’ I said. ‘But, oh! Richard!’

  ‘There,’ he said. ‘I knew you wanted to ride her all along.’

  ‘You are the best of cousins,’ I told him exuberantly. But then we heard Mama’s tread in the parlour coming towards the hall and the
stairs, and we fled to our bedrooms.

  I could hardly sleep for excitement, and my sleep was light. Something awoke me in the earliest hours of the morning, just before it grew light. I heard someone on the stairs outside my room and I called out, ‘Who’s there?’

  ‘Shh,’ said Richard, pushing open my door. ‘It’s me. There’s someone prowling around the stables. I heard a noise and went down and saw him from the library window.’

  ‘Who?’ I said, muddled with sleep.

  ‘Too dark to see,’ Richard said. ‘I opened the window and called out and he ran off, whoever he was.’

  ‘Whoever could it be, and what could he want in the stables?’ I asked. Oh, Richard! The horses are all right, are they? Should we wake Mama?’

  ‘I could see their heads over the doors of the loose boxes,’ Richard said reassuringly. ‘The only person I could think of was Dench. The figure I saw had the look of him. He could have been visiting Jem and run off when he heard me call. He’d know that he’d not be welcome here after that scene he made yesterday afternoon.’

  ‘What shall we do?’ I asked. I was warm and cosy in bed and I did not relish the thought of getting out. As long as Scheherazade was safe, I had little interest in midnight prowlers.

  Richard yawned mightily. ‘Go back to sleep, I think,’ he said. ‘There’s no harm done that I can see. It did indeed look like Dench, but he certainly ran off out of the stable yard. I’ll tell Mama-Aunt in the morning; there’s no point waking her now.’

  ‘And in the morning I can go riding!’ I said in sleepy delight. ‘Will you come out and teach me first thing, Richard?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ he said indulgently. ‘First thing. Until then, little Julia.’

  I slid back into sleep immediately, but my excitement about riding Scheherazade woke me early. At once I jumped out of bed and threw on my oldest gown and pattered down the stairs. Mrs Gough was already up, making our morning chocolate. I said I would be straight back for mine, but I had to see Scheherazade first.

  Mrs Gough eyed me dourly, but I paid no heed to her and slid out of the kitchen door, scampered to the orchard for a windfall apple and ran back to the stable. I called, ‘Scheherazade!’ as soon as I got to the stable yard, but her head did not come over the half-door at my voice as it usually did. I called her again and felt suddenly uneasy that I did not hear her moving.