‘Yes, Harry?’ I said.
‘With both Celia and John away …” He let the request trail off. His breathing was shallow and a little faster. I shot him one unwinking look from under my dark eyelashes. A look that was both a challenge and an invitation.
‘I will go and light the fire,’ I said. ‘Ten minutes, Harry.’
He gave a sigh of anticipation and buttered another biscuit. I slid from the room like a snake and closed the door softly. ‘Carry on eating like that, Harry,’ I thought wryly, ‘and you will be dead within three years. Then my son Richard and my daughter Julia will be joint heirs, and I will be their guardian and the only Master of Wideacre until I hand over to my darling son. And neither Celia nor John will be able to stop me.’
I did not send an express letter post-haste after Celia. I did not send a footman riding after her to catch her. If quiet, conventional, mousy Celia could whirl out of the house with only a shawl over her head like some demented peasant woman, then she could travel non-stop, and no letter could reach Dr Rose before she did. With Coachman Ben Tyacke driving, no footman with my order would make him stop and turn against the order of Lady Lacey. And, given that Ben was a Tyacke and had loved his uncle dearly, the fact that I wished Celia to return would be enough to make him whip up the horses.
All I could count on was John’s instability, on Celia’s confusion and despair, and on Dr Rose’s prejudice against the two of them, which I had instilled without even planning to do, but which now came, like the witch they called me, unbidden to my hand. I could do nothing, I decided, as I sat back in my morning bath before my bedroom fire. Lucy had rung for more cans of hot water and took them from the footman at the door and poured the scalding jugful down my back. My toes were resting on the rounded lip of the bath, my body curled in the boiling sweet-scented water.
‘Miss Beatrice, you will scald,’ said Lucy predictably as I waved for another hot jug.
‘Yes,’ I said happily and felt the near-unbearable heat wash around me. My ten toes were rosy pink with heat; my buttocks and body would be scarlet. After a night of beating and threatening and cursing Harry into a frenzy of whimpering pleasure I felt a certain need to boil myself clean. I might have all the crimes of Wideacre on my copper-curly head — and a few I had not done as well — but at least I lacked Harry’s confused messiness. When I needed that sweeping flood of sexual pleasure all I wanted was an honest man to tumble me in bed or grass. Harry seemed to need an unending repertoire of threats and promises and a cupboardful of tricks. And his plump heaving body filled me neither with lust nor hatred, but with a certain cool disdain that excited him all the more. I waved for more hot water. I felt a need to scrub and scald Harry’s wet kisses off my skin.
I had done nothing, and I could do nothing, I thought, as Lucy poured the water, and at my gesture massaged the back of my neck with sweet perfumed soap right up to the damp hairline in hard slow circles.
‘Mmmm,’ I said in pleasure, and closed my eyes.
At the very, very worst Celia and John would come home a pair of avenging angels to destroy Wideacre and the garden of deception I had grown here. John had guessed that Harry was Richard’s father, and Celia’s secret — that Julia too was my child — would be another piece in the jigsaw. The two secrets together would ruin me.
But I looked at that prospect with my fighter’s gaze. I thought I might survive it. John was fresh from the cool sanity of a well-run asylum, unready for the craziness of his real life. I had established him as insane, I might be able to tar Celia with the same brush. Theirs was an insane tale. No one would believe it. It would be far more convincing to claim that their guilt and desire had driven John to drink and overset Celia’s senses. That together they had dreamed of a nightmare world of terror: of monsters in mazes, of toads crushed beneath a plough, of wounded hares. It was nonsense. No one would believe them if I could hold my head as proud as a queen and face down every truth as the vilest calumny.
But I did not think they would put the two halves of the picture together.
‘Don’t stop,’ I said to Lucy, who obediently moved the piping cloth over one shoulder and then the other.
John was fighting with one hand tied behind him because of his tenderness to Celia. I knew that. I had watched him in his first days of horror-stricken knowledge when he wavered between drunken despair, hatred for me, and horror at the web that enmeshed us all. If he had been going to expose me to Celia, to wreck her marriage, to break her heart with the disgusting truth of her beloved husband, he would have done it then. But he did not. Not even when he was writhing in a strait-jacket on the floor of her parlour had the secret escaped him. He was not shielding me. He was protecting Celia from the horror that undermined her life so that the very ground beneath her feet was an eggshell cover over a maze of sin. Celia herself might expose me to John in her first gabble of panic, but I could trust my cool steady husband to see the full picture and yet keep his own counsel.
And I did not fear Celia. If she returned alone or decided to act alone I did not think she would expose me. She had given her word of honour and I imagined that would count for much with her. She had loved me once and that might make her pause. She loved respectability as much as my foolish mama, and to expose me would be my ruin and the shame of the Laceys. But more than all of that, more than everything, was her total love for Julia, which, I imagined, would transcend every other thing. If she exposed me as Julia’s mother, even in my shame I could claim Julia and take her away. Whatever pain and confusion boiled in Celia’s mind I knew, as I knew my own clear-headed calculations, that she would never risk losing Julia. One hint of that danger and Celia would withdraw.
I bent my knees so that the hot water washed over my soaped shoulders and rinsed me clean. I had them both. They both loved and so they were both vulnerable. Compared to that bondage of devotion I was free and unbound. My love for Richard neither contained nor controlled me. I still went my own way. I might plot for him, but I would not sacrifice myself for him. But Celia and John were not their own masters. And as such I did not fear them.
‘Towel, please,’ I said to Lucy, and she fetched the coarse, linen wraps from where they were warming before the fire. I rubbed myself as hard as I could, until my pink skin stung, and then I brushed my hair free in a silky copper mane, soft as satin on my back. My body showed no signs of two pregnancies. My belly was flat and hard, my breasts round and still firm, my legs as long and as slim as ever with no disfiguring veins.
I smoothed my palm down from my neck, over the jutting swell of my breasts, down over my belly with the soft curls of hair between my legs. I was lovely still. And soon I should need a lover. A real lover, not a chore like Harry, but a man who would laugh with me and romp with me and hurt me and pleasure me. I turned with a sigh and snapped my fingers for Lucy to fetch my petticoats. The hard fighting loving I remembered were those passionate struggles I had with Ralph. God alone knew where I would find another like him. I supposed I should have to resign myself to missing him and longing for him.
And waiting. Waiting for this hard time to be done. Waiting for the profits to show on the land so that Wideacre could be eased, if only slightly, from this drag of debt that I had put on the land. Waiting for the great golden glut of corn to release the land and the people from this struggle for money. So that I could restore a little, instead of snatching away. So that people would forget this one bad year of my mastership of Wideacre and remember instead the good years that had followed each other, one after another, since I had run the land.
Today I should spend another morning in my office trying to make sense of the figures. Mr Llewellyn now had three mortgages on our land: the common land, the plantation, and Celia’s dowry lands. But to service the loan to him, when the beasts did so badly, I had borrowed from our bankers. Their rates were lower and I had been pleased with my cleverness at winning Wideacre a little breathing space. But they had the right to alter their rates as they pleased, and now I
was paying more to borrow their money than the rate I was paying Llewellyn. I was in the ludicrous position of borrowing money to service a loan. And if I was late with either debt there were penalty clauses to meet.
Last month I had been forced to sell some fat lambs in an early market and had earned less than they deserved, because I was desperate for cash. This month, with Llewellyn’s repayments and the bankers’ loan both falling due, I would have to face the prospect of selling land — I could not keep on selling off stock out of season. There had to be some way to break free of this downward spiral of debt; yet I could see none. And I had no one to advise me. Only one man I knew understood the ways of the London money-men. Only one man I knew could tell me if it was indeed as I feared, that they were playing with me like a clever fisherman plays with a salmon; that, although I spoke privately to only two or three, they all heard my words; that the message was out: Wideacre was headed for ruin and some skilful fisherman could net it with a flick of his wrist. Only one man could advise me on this. And he was advising Celia on how the two of them could wreck my plans, as they drove home together.
I counted the days that Celia had been away as I went downstairs to breakfast. A day to get to Bristol, since she had started in the early evening. A day or two days to see John and to persuade Dr Rose to release him. Two days to drive home. Heads together in the carriage. Minds together, pitted against me. Planning my downfall, driving closer.
I thought four or five days, and I was right. On the afternoon of the fourth day since Celia had dashed from the house, the carriage came bowling up the drive: muddy, and with one lamp broken. And the two of them inside.
‘They are here,’ I said tersely to Harry. ‘You know what you have to do. We have talked it over, and I am sure you are right. She had tried to meddle with our business. She dashed out of the house to go to another man, and that man my husband. She ran away like a mad thing. She has exposed the Laceys to comment in the county.’
Harry nodded. He was breathing fast and there was a certain brightness in his eyes. ‘She should be punished,’ he said, and I remembered his early training in bullying at his vicious school.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘She has been treated like porcelain by us all. Take her at once and take your pleasure on her. You are her husband. You have the right. Go and break her.’
He nodded again. ‘But no man could hurt Celia,’ he said, wanting to be convinced and loving to hear the words.
‘Any real man could,’ I said tempting. ‘You of all people could, Harry. Remember the little boys at your school? Besides, Celia may be precious to you but you cannot allow her to behave like this. She fled from you to John. If you want to keep her you had best show her who is Master. You are the Squire. You are her husband. You can do anything you like to her. But do not listen to a word she says. Just reclaim her.’
Harry’s eyes were wide and blue and his breath came fast. He walked past a tray of cakes without even seeing them. He blundered to the front door alight with cruelty and lust. We heard the noise of the carriage draw up and Harry was at the door before Stride could be there. Celia tumbled out, not waiting for the steps. She was wearing the dress she had left in, and it was creased and shabby from travelling. She looked nothing like the Lady Lacey who had dominated Harry and me. She looked exhausted and a little afraid.
‘Harry?’ she said hesitantly and went up the steps towards him where he stood, unmoving, by the front door.
He was magnificent. He said not a word. He looked like some fat hero in the travelling theatre. His face was stony. She came beside him, and put her little hand on his arm.
‘Harry?’ she said again. He scooped her up into a hard grip and I saw her face blench white as he hurt her. Then, still without a word, he swept her into the house and up the main stairs to the first floor. I heard his heavy tread along the corridor to their bedroom, the door open and close, and the double click as he locked it. Then I turned back to the carriage. Whatever was happening behind that door I cared not. Celia would be humiliated and would be forced down to face the mire of Harry’s twisted desires. If she refused him he could strike her or rape her. If she consented she would carry the filth of his perverse pleasure on her soul and never again would she meet John with unshadowed eyes or stand before me in my own office and lay down the law to me. She would be humbled to dust.
I smiled.
John caught that smile as he stepped down from the carriage. The sunshine was bright but he shivered as if a cold wind had blown down the nape of his neck. He was looking well. The strained, desperate look had gone from his face and he had put on weight and was lithe and fit again. The hollows under his eyes had gone, and the muscle that used to twitch in his cheek was still. His ordeal had graven two hard lines either side of his unsmiling mouth and two deep frown lines above his eyebrows, but his face was serene, strong. He was dressed immaculately with his usual neatness, in black with the whitest of linen, and a thick black travelling coat. I met his blue eyes and we measured each other in a long hard stare. He might have the look of the man I had loved, but we were sworn enemies. I said no word of greeting but turned on my heel and walked back to the parlour.
I poured myself a cup of tea and my hands were steady. Unbidden, the parlourmaid came in with another cup and a plate, and behind her, as if he had taken tea with me every day for the past five months, came John my husband. He shut the parlour door with a click and I wondered why that little noise should give me such a shudder of dread. I was alone with my husband.
‘Tea?’ I asked courteously. ‘Some cakes? Or some fruit bread?’
‘Let us have some straight talking, if you please,’ he said, and his voice was even and clear. He was cured of his terror of me, and of his need to drink when my shadow fell on him. I had lost my old power over John and I rose to stand by the mantelpiece so that I could casually rest my arm along it, to hide the fact that my knees were shaking with anxiety.
John moved into the centre of the parlour and dominated the pretty room. His driving coat with the great capes seemed too bulky for the small space. His high black polished boots seemed to straddle the carpet. His hat on a chair filled the lady’s room with male power and male threat. I held on tight to the stone of the mantelpiece and kept my face impassive.
‘I have nothing to say to you,’ I said. My voice did not quaver. He would not know I was afraid. I guarded myself too well.
‘No, but I have some things to say to you,’ he said. I glanced towards the door. He would be able to catch me before I reached it. I thought about pulling the bell on the pretext of more hot water, but then I thought better of it. This was as good a time as any to face John. And he would have to be faced some time this day. Now I had him without Celia, without Harry, and tired from the journey. Also, with a warm flicker of relief, I felt my anger growing, and I knew that if he threatened me I would challenge him and beat him down. I was no longer the woman who could not move for grief and horror because children fled at her approach. I was a woman fighting for myself and my child, and my child’s inheritance and my own home. I had not desolated Wideacre, enclosed the fields and murdered the sweetest lads in the village, to collapse in a repentant heap because my husband looked hard at me with his pale blue eyes.
‘I know what you have done,’ he said. ‘Celia told me all she knew, and with the knowledge that I have, I could understand what you have done.’
‘What do you fancy I have done?’ I said, my tone icy.
‘You have had two incestuous bastards sired by your brother,’ said John, his voice as cold as mine. ‘One you passed off on Celia who presented it to Harry as her own. One you tried to fob off on me. Then you had me committed to a lunatic asylum — oh, yes, that is what it was, thank you, my dear — so you could rob me of my fortune to buy your son into the inheritance and to lock your two children in partnership on the land.’
My knuckles gleamed white as I gripped the mantelpiece. But I said not a word.
‘What I shall do is to
untangle this thread of sin and deceit and set us all free of you,’ John said. ‘Some of your legal contracts and agreements will be breakable, and I shall break them,’ he said. ‘The children should be cleaned of the taint of you, and of this damnable land. Celia shall be freed of this morass of sin and complicity you have tricked her into. And she may save Harry from you.’
‘You are ready to hang then?’ I asked drily. ‘I promised you I would swear you had killed Mama. The noose would be round your neck the second you speak one word against me. You are tired of life then, John? You are ready for death?’
His eyes met mine without a shadow of dread and with a dawning coldness down my spine, along my shoulders, I realized I had lost that hold on him too.
‘I’ll take my chance,’ he said, and his eyes met mine with a strength that was greater than my own. ‘I’m prepared to stand trial to expose you, Beatrice. No court in the land could try me for manslaughter, or even murder, without hearing why your mama’s heart stood still on that night. Then you would be exposed to the world as an incestuous whore, as the mother of two bastards, and a thief. Are you ready for that, my pretty wife?’
‘You won’t get your money back,’ I said spitefully. ‘You’ve lost that for ever. It’s in Charles Lacey’s hands and if I know him it’s already half spent.’
‘No,’ he acknowledged. And he was not looking at me, but out of the window, towards the green line of the horizon. ‘No, but I can save the children from you … and Celia.’
‘A strange way to free them,’ I said harshly. ‘To free them with your death. I might be shamed, but Celia would have nowhere to live but here. Harry might be disgraced but he would still be Squire. We would all live on here without you. Are you ready for a death that changes nothing?’
‘It is not I who am ready for death, Beatrice,’ he said. He had turned back and was looking at me, hot with hatred, but with a sharp interest. His eyes were those of Dr MacAndrew again, the quickest-witted physician ever to come out of Edinburgh. ‘I see it on you,’ he said acutely. ‘You have lost yourself somewhere down this weary evil road that you have travelled. The life has gone out of you, Beatrice.’
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