Meridon (Wideacre Trilogy 3)

by Philippa Gregory

  ‘I don’t think you would either of you enjoy the country at this time of year. At any time it is dreary enough, but in February I should think you would both go mad with melancholy cooped up at Havering.’ She paused. I waited but Perry said nothing.

  ‘Besides,’ she said. ‘Many of the Havering staff are here, there is no butler nor chef in Sussex. You had better wait until the Season ends in the spring, Sarah.’

  ‘We were planning to go to Wideacre,’ I said. ‘It does not matter that your staff are here, Lady Clara. Perry and I are going to stay at Wideacre.’

  ‘Better not,’ she said smoothly. ‘There has been gossip enough, I should like you to be seen around town, Sarah. I don’t want you down in the country, it looks too much as if we had something to hide.’

  I looked back at her. Her blue eyes were limpid, the candles before her made her face glow with colour. She was sitting at the head of the dining-room table, Perry at the foot. I was placed in the middle, insignificant.

  Perry cleared his throat. ‘Sarah did want to go, Mama,’ he said. ‘She has not been well, she needs to rest in the country.’

  His mother flicked him a look which was openly contemptuous. ‘I have said that is not possible,’ she said.

  I could feel my temper building inside me but I was not a young lady to shriek or have the vapours, or throw down my napkin and run out of the room. I took a sip of water and looked at Lady Clara over my glass.

  ‘We’ve lost our manager on Wideacre,’ I said. ‘I need to be down there to meet the new man. I don’t want to be away so long. There will be talk down there too about this marriage. I’d like to go down. I had planned to go down within a couple of weeks.’

  The footmen started to remove the plates, the butler brought a plate with slices of beef in a red wine sauce to the table and served Lady Clara, then me, then Peregrine. There were artichokes and potatoes, carrots and small green sprouts. Perry fell to and ate as if he was trying to deafen himself to any appeal I might make to him. But I was not such a fool as to think that Perry could help me.

  ‘It’s not possible, Sarah,’ Lady Clara said pleasantly enough. ‘I am sorry to disappoint you, but I need you both in London.’

  ‘I am sorry,’ I said mirroring her regret. ‘But I do not want to stay in London.’

  Lady Clara glanced at the footmen and at the butler. They stood against the wall as if they were deaf and blind. ‘Not now,’ she said.

  ‘Yes. Now,’ I said. I did not care what London society thought of me, I certainly did not care what Lady Clara’s servants thought of me. ‘I want to go to Wideacre at once, Lady Clara. Perry and I are going to go.’

  Lady Clara looked down the table at Perry. She waited. He had his head bent low over his plate and he was trying not to meet her eye. The silence lengthened.

  ‘Perry…’ she said; it was all she needed to do.

  Perry looked up. ‘I am sorry, Sarah,’ he said. ‘Mama is right. We’ll stay in London until the roads are a little drier, later in the year. We will do as Mama wishes.’

  I felt myself flush red but I nodded. There was nothing more to say. I had not thought that Lady Clara and I might pull Perry in opposite directions, I had not thought that I would be under the cat’s paw. But the laws of the land said that Perry was my master, and he was ruled by his mama.

  I nodded at her, indeed I bore her little ill will. I had wanted my way and she had wanted hers, and she had won. I had learned about power in my hard little childhood. I had been a fool to think people lived in any other way just because they ate well and slept soft.

  ‘I thought it was agreed that I might live as I please?’ I asked levelly.

  She looked around uncomfortably at the footmen again, but she answered me.

  ‘I did agree that,’ she said. ‘But that was before this nonsense with Maria blew up. I need you, Sarah, I need Perry too. I cannot afford any scandal talked about this family if we are to hold Basil. Once this Season is over it can be as you wish.’

  I nodded. I did not doubt she meant it, but I had learned in that brief exchange that I was as tied to her as I had been sold to Robert Gower, and owned by Da. I was not a free woman. I was apprenticed for a lifetime. All I could ever hope to do was to change the masters.

  They cleared the dinner plates and served the puddings. There were three different sorts. Perry got his head down and ate as if he never expected to see food again. He was on to his second bottle. Both his mama and I saw his flight into drunkenness, and she shook her head at the butler when Perry’s wine glass was empty again.

  All in all, it was not a happy meal. Elegant; but not happy.

  Nor a happy evening. Maria was dressed in scarlet as if to shame the devil and she greeted us at the head of her stairs with her head held high and Basil looking hang-dog at her side.

  ‘Why, here is your mama-in-law!’ she exclaimed as Lady Clara came up the stairs. ‘And Perry, and the gypsy heiress!’ she said in a lower voice.

  ‘My dear…’ Basil complained. He took Lady Clara’s hand and bowed low. Maria stepped forward and kissed her mama, Perry, and then me. Her cheek was cold and dry with powder, she was white under her rouge.

  ‘Everyone’s here!’ she said brightly. ‘I don’t think there’s been such a squeeze since Lady Taragon ran off!’

  Lady Clara’s face was stony at the reference. ‘Keep your voice down, Maria,’ she said in a biting undertone. ‘And behave yourself.’

  Maria shot a bright defiant look at her, but she greeted her next guests more soberly, and nodded to the servants to pass around chilled champagne among the crowd.

  Basil came over and drew Lady Clara into the window-seat. I could see his bald head nodding and his thin voice droning on. Lady Clara spread her fan to shield them and looked compassionately at him, over the top. Perry and I were alone. He took another glass off a passing waiter and downed it.

  ‘I am sorry, Sarah,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t tell her “no”.’

  ‘Why not?’ I asked. ‘All you had to do was to tell her that you agreed with me, I’d have done the rest.’

  He shrugged. One of Maria’s footmen came and took the empty glass and exchanged it for a full one. ‘I don’t know,’ he said miserably. ‘I don’t know why. I’ve never been able to stand up to her. I suppose I can’t start now.’

  ‘Now’s the time you should start,’ I said. ‘I’m there to help you, we both know what we want to do, and you have control of your fortune. What can she do if she doesn’t like it? She can get angry, but she can’t do anything.’

  ‘You don’t know what she’s like…’ he said.

  ‘What who’s like?’ Maria asked from behind me.

  Perry made a face at her. ‘We wanted to go down to Havering, but Mama is keeping us in town,’ he said dolefully. ‘She wouldn’t have minded if you hadn’t been kicking up a dust, Maria.’

  He turned away from Maria’s reply, looking for another glass of wine. Maria looked hard at me. ‘I suppose you think it’s awful,’ she said harshly.

  ‘Not at all,’ I said steadily. I was not afraid of Maria.

  ‘I’d have thought a young bride like you, and married for love, would think it was awful…’ she said again.

  ‘I’m not married for love and you know it,’ I said. I kept my voice low and the hum of conversation around us and the distant ripple of a harp and a violin were enough to drown out my words for anyone but Maria. ‘But I’d not be fool enough to marry a man old enough to be my father for his money and then hope to get away with playing fast and loose.’

  Maria’s eyes were very bright. ‘Is that what you think it is?’ she asked her voice hard. ‘I fell in love with Rudolph, I didn’t hope to get away with it. I wanted us to run away altogether. I didn’t even care about the money.’

  I said nothing. Maria looked around and saw her mama side by side with her husband, their heads together.

  ‘She’s got me where she wants me,’ she said resentfully. ‘And he has. The two of
them together. They bought Rudolph off – I know! I know that shows he wasn’t much good! – I never said he was much good. But he made me feel alive, he made me feel as if I had never been young before!’ She looked at me and her eyes which had been bright went hard again. ‘You wouldn’t even begin to understand,’ she said bitterly.

  I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said sadly. ‘I’ve never been like that with a man.’

  She held out her hands before her and looked at the heavy rings. ‘He used to take my rings off and kiss each one of my fingers,’ she said. Her voice was heavy with longing. ‘And every time the tip of his tongue touched that little place between each finger I used to tremble all over.’ She glanced at me. ‘All over,’ she said.

  I was thinking of Will Tyacke and how I had warned him that I had no love to give a man. I was thinking of the time he had peeled down my glove and kissed me on the wrist and pulled the glove up again as if to keep the kiss warm. I was thinking of how he had followed me to Gower’s show that night and seen me wrecked with grief for her. I was thinking that even though he had Becky and her love, he had come to London whenever I asked him. It was me who named our meeting days. He never failed me. He never promised me one thing he did not do. And at the end he said that if I married Perry I would not see him again.

  He had kept that promise too.

  ‘I shall never forgive them,’ Maria said. She suddenly smiled, a hard bright smile. ‘I shall never forgive those two,’ she said, nodding towards her husband and her mama. ‘That fat old bawd and that cheap lecher. She sold me and he bought me, and he is making her keep to her side of the bargain.’

  Lady Clara and Basil had risen from their seats and were coming towards us.

  ‘You should have run when you had the chance,’ Maria said to me. ‘When I first met you, when you were just up from the country. I thought then that if you’d had any wit you’d have got out of Mama’s clutches. But you wanted to be a lady, didn’t you? I hope it brings you much joy!’ she laughed, a hard bitter laugh which made a few people turn around and look at us, and made Lady Clara come to her side.

  ‘It’s time to hear La Palacha sing,’ she prompted. ‘I’m longing to hear her, Maria, Basil has been telling me how charming she is.’

  Maria nodded obediently and turned to summon one of the footmen.

  ‘I have to go,’ I said firmly. Lady Clara turned to me with a frown.

  ‘Don’t you start,’ I said warningly and she heard the old toughness in my voice and hesitated. ‘It’s my first time out and I can’t abide standing around,’ I said. ‘Perry said he’d take me home. I’ve come as you bid me, and I’ll be staying in London as you wish. But don’t push me, Lady Clara, I won’t have it.’

  She gave me a tight little smile at that. ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘Make your curtsey to the princess as you go out. You are going to her luncheon tomorrow.’

  ‘Yes ‘m,’ I said in imitation of Emily’s servitude. ‘Thank’ee ‘m.’

  Lady Clara’s eyes narrowed, but she leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. I smiled at her, my clear showground smile and then made for the door. Perry was swaying slightly on his feet, his eyes glazed, a glass in his hand.

  ‘Time to go,’ I said tightly. Perry nodded. We paused for a moment by the princess to bid her good evening. She exclaimed over my cropped head and my paleness and said I must promise to come to her luncheon tomorrow and eat some good Russian food. And now I was a wife too! How had that been?

  ‘Private,’ Perry said owlishly. ‘’Stremely private.’

  The princess’s sharp little eyes were bright with curiosity. ‘So I had heard!’ she said. ‘Was only your family there?’

  ‘’Stremely private!’ Perry said again.

  The princess looked to me, she was waiting for an answer.

  ‘It was during my illness, your highness,’ I said. ‘A quiet ceremony, at home. We were anxious to be married and we foresaw a long illness.’

  Perry made his bow. ‘’Stremely private indeed,’ he said helpfully.

  The footman mercifully opened the door and I put my hand on Perry’s arm and pinched him hard to get him out.

  ‘You drunken doddypoll, Perry!’ I said irritably. ‘I wish to God you’d stay sober!’

  ‘Oh, don’t scold, Sarah!’ he said, feckless as a child. ‘I had enough of that with you and Mama at dinner. Don’t scold me, I can’t bear it. Be nice, and I’ll see you home.’

  I took his arm and we went downstairs, he was steady enough on his feet.

  ‘You need not,’ I said. ‘You can go straight to your club if you will promise me that you’ll come away if you start losing.’

  ‘Yes, I promise,’ Perry said carelessly. ‘I’ll come away if I lose and I’ll only drink another glass or two. And tomorrow Sarah, if you’re well, we can go riding in the park together.’

  ‘I’d like that,’ I said. The link boy outside the house waved for our carriage and it came up. Perry helped me in and kissed me on the hand. His lips were wet. Unseen, I wiped my hand on the cushions of the chaise.

  ‘Call me tomorrow morning,’ he said, ‘’bout ten.’

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Good-night.’

  I watched him as the carriage drew away from the brightly lit doorway. The petulant rosebud mouth, the mass of golden curls, his downcast blue eyes. He was exactly the same young man as he had been on the London road that day, who was too drunk to find his home.

  The same, and yet not the same. For when I had met him then he had worn his joy in life about him, like a cloak from his shoulders. But the young man outside the wealthy house stood as if, in reality, he had nowhere to go, and would find no pleasure in anything he did.

  37

  I tumbled out of the carriage and up the broad stairs without a word to the butler or the footmen. I could have wept with my tiredness, there were some times when I thought I would never get my strength back. At those times, if I had been little Miss Sarah, a lady born and bred, I should have wept and taken the next day in bed, and the next, and the next after that.

  But I was not one of the Quality, I was a hard little Rom chavvy and I would not rest. I let my new maid undress me, and tuck me into bed; but then I told her to call me at eight for I was going riding, and I ignored her murmured advice. I would get well by fighting through. All my tough work-hardened life I had got sick and got well again by fighting through. I knew of no other way. I did not even know when I was sick and tired deep into my very soul, and that fighting and struggling and trying would not make that any better.

  I slept at once, as soon as the door closed behind her, and in my deepest early sleep I dreamed of a day of sunshine, when I rode by the sea and someone loved me. Suddenly, I started awake. I had heard something which did not fit with the usual night-time sounds. Soft footsteps past my bedroom door, a slight noise from the stairs and then I heard the well-oiled click of the front-door latch and a carriage drive away down the street. I guessed then that Peregrine had come back for something.

  Some instinct, some old hungry Rom instinct made me raise myself half up on one elbow and stare in the flickering firelit darkness across my bedroom. Something was not right.

  I pushed back the covers and stepped out of my bed, walked unsteadily across the room, opened my bedroom door and looked into the hall. It was all quiet down there. A footman dozing on a chair, the butler back in his own private room. I shrugged, and turned back for my room, irritated with myself for losing the rest I needed for some nervous fancy.

  Then I heard a carriage draw up outside the house and saw the footman unfold himself out of the chair in a hurry and rush to the butler’s room. I turned, silent in my bare feet, and scurried back to my room, shut my door in a hurry and slipped back into my bed and shut my eyes to feign sleep. I heard the front door open and Lady Clara’s high-heeled slippers tapping loudly on the marble floor as she crossed the hall. I heard her ask the butler if I was well and his quieter reply. I lay still and listened for her footsteps to
go past my bedroom to her own.

  I waited until I heard her door close for the last time and I heard her maid sigh as she carried the soiled clothes down the corridor towards the back stairs where they would have to be washed and perhaps ironed overnight if Lady Clara wanted them in the morning.

  They would all be in bed now, except for the kitchenmaid. Perry did not order his valet to wait up for him, a candle was left for him in the hall, and his fire was banked in to burn all the night and most of the morning in his empty bedroom. The last person working was the kitchenmaid – watching the copper in the kitchen and washing Lady Clara’s linen. She would wring them out and then leave them drying before she crept up the stairs to her little bed. Everyone else was quiet.

  I slipped from my bed and threw my wrapper around my shoulders and stepped, quiet as a cat, barefoot to my bedroom door, opened it, listened. There were no lights shining, the house was in silence. I stepped delicately on to the carpet in the corridor and stole softly down towards Perry’s room. His door opened with the quietest click. I froze and listened. There was nothing. I opened the door a little way and slid inside and closed it carefully behind me. I stood in silence and waited. Nothing.

  The flames flickered in the grate, a candelabra was by Perry’s bedside with three of the five candles lit. I lifted it and stood it on his washstand so I could have the best light, then I turned and opened his wardrobe doors.

  He had been wearing his mulberry-coloured coat with the green waistcoat this afternoon, when I had told him our marriage contract had arrived, and the deeds with it. I opened his wardrobe door and the coat was hanging, along with twenty others on hangers. I put my hand in the right-hand pocket, and then in the left-hand one. I took the coat out of the wardrobe and felt in every pocket and I even shook the coat in case I could feel the weight of the bulky papers in some pocket which was concealed.

  There was nothing there.

  The deeds of Wideacre were gone. I laid the coat on the floor and smoothed my hands all over it, alert for the rustle of thick paper, waiting for the feel of bulky documents under my fingertips. The deeds were not there. I had known they would not be, but I still had held to a little flicker of hope. That was foolish of me. In the hard, hungry corner of my mind I knew the deeds were not mislaid. I knew I had been robbed.