Circle of Pearls

by Rosalind Laker

  11

  Adam was studying a painting, his back to her, when she entered the room. His blue-black hair curled down to his broad shoulders, his wide collar was of lace, his short jacket and straight breeches were of fox-red velvet and his boots bucket-topped. As she closed the door behind her he turned slowly and their eyes met across the length of the oak-panelled room. Instantly, like a flint spark to tinder, there was a resurgence in her of that frightening awareness of the magnetism in him that had affected her at Sotherleigh on the evening of her Royalist outburst. She had thought afterwards it was due simply to the shock of suddenly seeing him in her own home, but now it had swept back again to burn mercilessly into her, making her flesh quiver.

  ‘I wanted to see you,’ he said without preliminaries. Those few words covered everything from the long ride he had made from Sussex to the marriage settlement arranged with Makepeace.

  Her voice was dangerously soft and even. ‘When a good friend made an appeal to Cromwell on my mother’s behalf against the sequestration of Sotherleigh, he was told he had been wasting his time. I’m saying that to you.’

  He took a couple of steps forward. ‘We need to clear the air between us and put old feuds to rest.’

  ‘Impossible.’ She was not heated, simply cool and distant, ‘You should never have come to Sotherleigh that day. Sheer basic common sense should have told anyone in your position that to come blundering in without announcement would cause a widow much distress.’

  ‘Yet I came out of concern for your mother. It was to warn her of the forthcoming sequestration, because I had had confirmation of it that same morning. My first thought was to see what I as a neighbour might do to help.’ He moved nearer again as he continued what he had to say.

  ‘But you made the feelings of the Pallisters towards my family clear enough and when afterwards I wrote to Mrs Walker — or Mrs Pallister as she was then — my letter was refused at the gates. At that point my hands were tied. I did write once more to the Lord Protector to ask that the sequestration should at least be postponed, but it was to no avail.’

  She had been listening with subtle changes of expression passing across her face, ranging from initial disbelief to the realization that every word he was saying showed clearly that in her headstrong way she had made a grave error about him.

  ‘Once more?’ she queried uncertainly. ‘Had you tried before then?’

  ‘Yes, I had.’ He gestured for her to sit. She moved slowly across to a window seat while he continued to stand, watching her. The sun through the thick panes made golden threads of her wayward curls and shot streaks of light across the rose silk of her sleeves.

  ‘Why should you wish to intervene when there has been such enmity between our two families on a personal as well as a political level?’ she asked soberly.

  ‘For one thing, when I heard my new neighbour was likely to be a regicide it made my gall rise. But far more than that, when I went through my father’s papers after his death some interesting facts came to light.’ A corner of his mouth twitched in private amusement as he took a chair by its back and swung it forward to sit facing her. ‘I don’t quite know how to tell you this, but I believe your grandmother and my grandfather were lovers in their younger days.’

  She stared at him, her eyes widening. Katherine had spoken of Sir Harry in the past, and during her mental wanderings after her stroke his name had come to the fore sometimes, but this information was startlingly unexpected. ‘Whatever led you to that belief?’

  ‘There were no love letters. Nothing of that kind. But there was wartime correspondence between my grandfather and several powerful Parliamentary politicians whom he counted as old friends, in which he requested their word that whatever punishments were inflicted on prominent Royalists at the end of the conflict, at least the Pallisters of Sotherleigh should be spared the loss of their house and land. A document bearing the signatures of those politicians gave my grandfather the promises he wanted in the last days of his life.’ He saw the unspoken question in her eyes and shook his head reassuringly. ‘None of those names were later on the royal death warrant.’

  She considered what had been said. ‘Maybe Sir Harry took that action out of sheer kindness. I know from what my grandmother has said of him that he was a good man.’

  ‘I think it was more than that. To one old friend he wrote twice that it was for the sake of his dear Katherine.’

  ‘But if that document exists, why did the sequestration take place?’

  ‘When that paper was signed none of the six signatories was young. Now three are dead and two are retired. The last one is still in the government, but has no influence on his own.’ He drew in a deep breath. ‘I regret to have to tell you that shortly before my father’s death he deliberately reversed all that Sir Harry had done by bringing the exemption of the sequestration of Sotherleigh to the Lord Protector’s notice. After that, a new order had Cromwell’s seal on it and the fate of your home was settled beyond any further intervention.’ She saw clearly that he had had the choice of letting his father’s ill deed go unchallenged or taking up his grandfather’s goodwill. ‘So you did what you could for us out of respect for Sir Harry’s wishes.’

  ‘I did.’ He recalled again his disgust at his father’s senseless vengeance against the helpless family of a dead enemy.

  She was silent, her gaze directed unseeingly out of the window, her long lashes flecked with the same golden light as in her hair. It was impossible to turn back the clock, but if only she could stand again in Sotherleigh’s drive at the moment of meeting Adam she would have found a friend instead of making him an enemy in her own mind. It might have been possible for him to use his influence in such a way that Sotherleigh could have come under his jurisdiction and Makepeace need never have appeared on the horizon. Adam would have allowed life to go on at Sotherleigh undisturbed. It was all her fault. Every bit of the mayhem caused could be laid at her door. Such despair welled up in her at all her past foolishness that she trembled from the force of it. What a wild, headstrong girl she had been! Was there any way in which she could ever make amends to those who had suffered through her actions?

  She turned and looked Adam full in the face. ‘I offer you my most sincere apologies. I have made many terrible mistakes and misjudging you through my Royalist prejudice was surely the greatest of them all.’

  ‘You were not to know that I came to Sotherleigh in goodwill. One of the tragedies of war is that it leaves bitterness and suspicion where none should be.’ He drew up a chair and sat close to her. ‘Let us put that day behind us.’

  ‘But I gave you no chance to speak and I scarred you for life?’ Then she remembered something else. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt your horse. That grieved me deeply.’

  ‘I understood that, although I must admit that at the time it made me angrier than anything you had done to me.’

  ‘I should have felt the same.’

  The atmosphere had become more relaxed and yet he knew that she still had barriers up against him, although that could be as much from the powerful sexual attraction between them as anything else. Had she been of a Puritan family she would scarcely have known the shape of her own body, but Julia had the poise of a woman fully conscious of her lovely face and figure. There were untapped depths of passion in her that released silent signals instantly recognizable to any lusty and observant male. The impact of those signals had hit him harder than the frame she had hurled at him when she had stood defiantly before him in the drive at Sotherleigh.

  ‘I can’t let that incident on the hill go unmentioned?’ he said determinedly. ‘I have to admit that it all went much further than I had supposed it would?

  She shrugged. ‘Your friends behaved foolishly. Let us leave it at that.’

  ‘I still have a grievance. Say you take back your taunt of regicide that you threw at me together with that sour-faced company at Sotherleigh.’

  ‘I take it back, but you goaded me into it with your laughter.’

/>   The atmosphere had tautened again and they eyed each other like wary adversaries. He realized that this was how it was likely to be for a long while to come. ‘I’d only gone there in the hope of seeing you. I had nothing in common with any of the gentlemen there, Makepeace Walker least of all.’

  ‘They were all Parliamentarians. You should have felt at ease in such company, apart from the fact they were all older.’

  His hands tightened over the arm-ends of the chair and he shifted his weight forward as if prepared to leap from it at the slightest slur she might cast at him. ‘I’m as much for Cromwell in peace as my father was for him in war. That doesn’t mean I can’t see that his grip has slipped, but he brought law and order and reforms when they were most needed. Moreover I’m not a bigot or an extremist or a hypocrite, and you’ll have to judge me on my own merits, Julia.’

  She wondered if his mentioning the term ‘hypocrite’ meant he had seen through Makepeace as she had done, ‘I would if we were going to spend any time together, but that’s unlikely. I intend to stay at Bletchingdon for as long as I can.’

  ‘But I have a special reason for wanting us to be on good terms and to get to know each other.’

  ‘I’m aware of it,’ she answered frankly. ‘But neither am I a hypocrite and I can’t let you hope for what can never be. I happen to love someone else. Whether I shall marry him or not is uncertain at the present time, but that doesn’t mean I’ll ever wed someone that my stepfather has chosen for me. That in itself would put an end to anything before it should start.’ She held up a hand as if he was about to protest, although he had shown no sign of interrupting her. ‘I know I’m legally under Mr Walker’s control and guardianship, which can reach me wherever I am in England, but I can slip that net whenever I wish.’

  He answered her with equal frankness. ‘What makes you think I’d want you except by your own free will?’

  She thought of the naval expression about the wind being taken from one’s sails and it applied to her now. ‘I suppose I’ve become so accustomed to Mr Walker’s rigid will that I thought you’d be no different.’ She sighed with relief. ‘So I have nothing to worry about after all. You may tell Mr Walker upon your return to Sussex that you have accepted my decision.’

  ‘You’re putting words into my mouth. I’ll do no such thing.’

  ‘But you said — ’

  He rose from the chair and stood over her, looking down into her face. ‘You’ve given me no chance to say any of the things I planned to say to you. I thought when we had swept away all that was dividing us we should have entered upon a time and an experience that comes to one couple in a million. But you have introduced some lovesick nonsense that has not begun to touch the passion in you or else this wavering talk of perhaps a marriage or perhaps not’ — here he spread his hand and waved it like scales in the balance — ‘would never have entered your head.’

  ‘You’re wrong!’ She sprang up and drew away from him. ‘Once all I felt for this man made me forget modesty of every kind!’

  He regarded her piercingly. ‘But still he did not take you!’

  She felt the hot colour run across her cheekbones. ‘Not before marriage! He is an honourable man.’

  ‘You would not have received honour from me in such circumstances.’

  ‘That would not be expected from a Warrender.’

  Too late she realized she had undone all the good achieved earlier by her words. His arm shot out and he caught her about the waist bringing her hard against him, trapping her as if in a snare.

  ‘I’ll remind you we are betrothed, Julia.’ His angry face was only inches from hers. ‘One day you’ll be a Warrender too, upholding its strength and its reputation for all that is trustworthy as it was in times past and is again today.’ Then his mouth took hers with a force that she felt would have broken her neck if he had not been cupping her head in his hand. His kiss broke like a warm tidal wave over her lips, her teeth, her tongue and on and on down into her whole body, leaving no part of it untouched. If her arms had not been clamped to her sides by his iron strength she might well have driven her fingers up into his hair to gain some grip against the sensation of being totally swept away. She believed she cried out at this revelation of how a kiss could be between a man and woman, but his total, possession of her mouth smothered all sound.

  When the kiss ended he brought her head forward to let her cheek lie against his chest as if he had no wish that she should see his expression and she felt his lips rest lightly against the middle parting of her hair. She trembled within his tight embrace, knowing that she should utter some protest or make all the foolish show of indignation expected of a woman kissed against her will, but she and Adam had been honest with each other earlier and that was the better way. To pretend she had not enjoyed the experience would not have deceived him in any case. He would also know that she would be wishing that such a kiss had been given her by someone else.

  He put her from him quite gently. His face gave nothing away. Whatever his reaction had been to the kiss he had mastered it now. ‘When you return to Sotherleigh, Julia,’ he said with a touch of a smile, ‘I shall court you relentlessly.’

  ‘I may never return.’

  ‘You could not stay away from Sotherleigh indefinitely. Then one day, when you are ready, I shall take you as my wife to the Hall.’

  ‘You’re forgetting you said it would have to be by my own free will.’

  ‘That’s how it will be.’

  ‘The stigma of Makepeace Walker can’t be erased.’

  He took up his wide-brimmed grey hat. ‘I’ll overcome that somehow. Farewell for the time being, Julia. I’ll be waiting.’

  He was almost out the door when he turned back. ‘I was forgetting to tell you. I bought your horse Charlie from your stepfather, so you need have no fears as to his well-being.’

  She stood stupefied and speechless, but before she could grasp what he had done for her he was through the door and had closed it behind him.

  She returned to the window-seat, which faced the rear lawn, and so she did not see him leave. Voices in the hall were clear enough. He declined most courteously Susan’s invitation to supper and had a final word with William before the front door closed and she knew he had gone. Nobody intruded on her privacy for the next hour, giving her plenty of time to think over the whole encounter. She did not intend to marry him, but she was thankful that the situation between them was mended. Moreover, she felt as if her mind had been opened — all old prejudices banished. She had been as guilty as any extremist, whether Royalist or Parliamentarian, in making hasty judgements without investigation and tolerance. At least she would never be like that again and she owed it to Adam, who had shown himself to be fair and just as she had never been. He was also kind, a quality to commend him yet further in her estimation.

  But in one way he was still dangerous. She had also discovered in being with him what it was like to be violently attracted to a man without loving him. That came in the category of wantonness, which she would have to guard against most staunchly.

  *

  Life at Bletchingdon rectory drifted on peacefully. Julia continued to receive letters at intervals from Anne and Mary. Then there came one from her mother which filled her with sadness. Michael, full of concern for Anne and the change of situation at Sotherleigh, had written that he himself had married. His bride was the only child of the silk merchant by whom he was employed. Her name was Sophie Brissard, and it distressed him that in the midst of his own happiness in this marriage there should be so much misfortune for those dear to him at home.

  Folding the letter up again, Julia thought how devastated Mary must have been by this news. Unwittingly Michael had ruined the chances of any other man winning her love, for she had been patiently waiting, pinning her hopes on his return. It was not that she had ever disclosed this in so many words, but she had given herself away many times. For a matter of seconds Julia drew a comparison with her own love for Christopher
and then dismissed it. Her case was entirely different. Christopher did care for her whereas Michael had never shown by a single word in his letters that Mary held any special place in his affections, although he always included her in his fond greetings. In addition, she herself was being totally realistic. No matter what Adam had said, it was not lack of passion that had made her uncertain about marriage with Christopher. There was no lack of love on her side, and if that should never prove to be the case with Christopher she would get on with her life and carve her own future. Nothing should ever make her go under. Not even losing the man who would always mean the most to her.

  After receiving a letter from Sotherleigh Julia would suffer a bout of homesickness, but she would remind herself of Adam waiting for her and that dashed away any thought of return. At these times she was particularly grateful for Faith’s friendship. Steadily each girl’s character was influencing the other’s, Julia becoming quieter and Faith more confident.

  In August the Lord Protector fell ill and in September he died. A whole era of his masterly handling of the war and his stabilizing control afterwards had come to an end. There was an impressive state funeral in London, but little or no show of public grief. The cost of his imperialistic ventures abroad and his rigid Puritan restrictions clamped on the lives of ordinary people had caused his popularity to wane over the years. Some people were no longer afraid to speak of him openly as having been a tyrant. The fact that his son Richard, a thoroughly inadequate person, had been appointed as his successor brought further doubts about the wisdom of letting England’s rightful king remain in exile.

  Julia, expecting to spend her seventeenth birthday in Bletchingdon, was overjoyed when Susan received a letter from Christopher in which he insisted she put everything aside and bring her charge to Oxford on the fourteenth of October.

  ‘He’s underlined the date with four strokes of his pen,’ Susan declared with exasperation. ‘It is not convenient for me to leave just then, but I will do as he wishes.’