‘I thought I did.’
‘No. It’s always Darnay. It makes me feel … strange.’ He grinned. ‘When you say “Darnay” and “please” in the same sentence.’
‘Shut up, Dar— Lucian.’ I dug my elbow into his ribs. He was laughing. ‘What about Alta? She’ll notice. She’ll ask exactly when we got on to first-name terms.’
‘Does that matter?’
‘Yes.’ I sat up. ‘We can’t tell her—’
‘Of course not, you fool. I didn’t mean that.’ He pushed himself upright, twisting so he could look into my face. ‘We can’t tell anyone, ever.’
‘I know that! That’s why I said—’
‘Fine. Call me Darnay, then.’ He got to his feet and walked away.
I opened my mouth to say, ‘You’re not the lord of the manor, Lucian,’ but something stopped me just in time. He was knocking his fist against the stone doorway, over and over again. Slowly I stood up and walked over to him. My heart was thumping. I put my hands on his shoulders, waiting for him to push me away, or say something else. He didn’t.
‘Lucian,’ I said. ‘No one will find out.’
‘I hate this. I fucking hate it.’
‘I know.’ There was nothing else to say. He leant back. I bent my head and rested my forehead against the back of his skull. His hair smelt of grass and summer earth.
After a moment he laughed – a dry, painful sound, like a gasp – and dug in his pocket. He held something out to the side for me to take. It glittered.
‘What’s this?’
‘An engagement ring. I bought it in Castleford.’
I clenched my jaw. I wanted to push him away and send the ring flying into the moat. Instead I took hold of it and turned it over in my fingers. It was a plain band of silver set with a chunk of dark stone, striped with lustrous shadows that shone and melted as it caught the light. It was beautiful. ‘Alta wanted a gold garland with rubies and pearls,’ I said.
‘I know.’ He turned to catch my eye and laughed again. This time it sounded real. ‘You know Alta, she’s not shy to drop a hint.’
‘So why—’
‘Keep it.’
‘What? Me? Why?’
‘I’m not going to give it to Alta now, am I?’
‘You could pawn it. Or take it back to the shop. It must’ve cost—’
‘Wear it round your neck. Please.’ He closed my hand over it, squeezing until the ring dug into my palm. ‘I’ll get you a chain or something.’
‘All right,’ I said, although I still didn’t understand. ‘I’ll use a bootlace.’
He strolled to the edge of the moat and dipped his foot into the water. I looked at the ring, tilting it to make the colours come and go: kingfisher, purple, moss …
‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘If you knew Alta wanted something different …’
‘I listened to my heart,’ he said, without turning round.
‘You mean …’ I stopped. I could just see the contour of his cheek: he was smiling. ‘You knew,’ I said, slowly. ‘You bought it for me, knowing.’
‘I hoped.’
‘You calculating, arrogant bastard. You planned it all.’
‘Hey,’ he said, ‘it’s not arrogance if you’re right.’
I grabbed him. He tried to trip me up, but I pulled him off-balance and we wrestled with each other, teetering on the edge of the water. I could feel him laughing all the way down to my bones. ‘Don’t take me for granted,’ I said. ‘I’m not your servant.’ I was laughing, too, as I said it; then I wasn’t, and we were at arm’s length, staring at each other.
‘Never,’ he said. ‘I promise. Never.’
Did Alta see something in my face when she announced that, next time Lucian came, she’d let him apologise? I hoped not; but it was hard, when the world had changed so much, not to let anyone suspect. And Alta knew me so well; sometimes I wondered how she could not notice, when every muscle and tendon in my body felt new and raw … She said, ‘At least he hasn’t tried to force himself on me,’ and I had to turn away. I would have laughed, except that I could have cried. Now we’d be back the way we were. I wouldn’t be able to touch him or call him Lucian. I’d be too scared to look at him in case she read my expression. I couldn’t bear it; but I’d have to.
The next day I hated him. He made it look so easy. Every smile was for Alta, every joke was aimed in her direction, every sideways glance made her blush and dip her head. I felt my heart winding tighter and tighter like a clock, until I thought a spring would snap. That day we drove to the stonemason’s for a couple of misspelt tombstones to replace the shelves in the dairy, and the three of us sat side by side while he and Alta laughed and flirted as if they were already engaged. Part of me wished I’d come on my own, but I knew that it would have been worse to know that I’d passed up the chance to be within a few feet of him – even if he didn’t meet my eyes once. As we lifted the last slab into the back of the cart, he glanced up and I thought he’d look at me; but a second later he was helping Alta onto the seat, teasing her about the lettering on the marble, asking her if all her butter would come out marked with ‘PREPARE FOR DEATH’. Had I imagined it all? Or was this his way of showing me that I was just a plaything? Once, when we stopped for Alta to squat behind a bush, he put his hand on the back of my neck. I started to turn to him, but he dug his fingernails into my flesh, holding me still. Every nerve I had was knotted into the space where his skin met mine. Alta was still within earshot. We sat like that, silent, until she wandered back to us with a posy of flowers to maintain the pretence that she hadn’t needed a piss.
I couldn’t eat that night, or sleep. I crept out of my room at midnight. I had to see him; if he wasn’t waiting for me at the crossroads then I’d go all the way to the New House. When my bedroom door closed behind me the passage was thick with darkness, and as I trailed my fingers along the wall to guide me I could hear the whisper and bump of every tiny irregularity in the plaster. I carried my boots, and under my bare feet the floorboards hardly creaked at all.
But as I passed Alta’s room she called out softly, ‘Emmett? Is that you?’
I stumbled and took a second to catch my breath. ‘I’m just checking on Splotch.’
Alta opened her door so quickly I knew she hadn’t been in bed. She was silhouetted against the moonlight, her face in shadow. ‘Is she all right? Did you hear something?’
‘No. Never mind. Go back to bed, squirt.’
‘Only if you come and sit with me. I can’t sleep.’
I clenched my teeth. If I didn’t see Lucian I’d go mad. But with Alta awake, listening for me to come back, I couldn’t risk it. I let her pull me into the moonlit room. The colour was bleached from everything; her quilt was a black-and-white pattern of hearts and thorns, and the ivy clinging to the edge of the window gleamed like charcoal. It felt unfamiliar, like a room seen in a mirror.
Alta got into bed and lay down. I sat beside her and waited, but I could hear from her breath that she wasn’t falling asleep. She hadn’t let go of me, and her palm was damp. I tried not to think of the last time I’d felt someone else’s sweat against my skin.
‘Em?’
‘Go to sleep.’
She thumped her pillow into shape and rolled over. For a moment there was silence. Then she sighed and sat up, pushing herself back against the wall. ‘I can’t. I don’t want to. Emmett …’
‘What?’
‘Do you think Lucian’s in love with me?’
I twitched like a plucked string; then I exhaled, silently, and concentrated on relaxing every muscle. My heart was thudding so loudly I thought Alta might hear it. ‘Don’t be an idiot.’
She shifted, her eyes dark in the dim moonlight, and I expected her to protest. But she only laced her fingers together and said, at last, ‘Why is it idiotic?’
‘He’s – you’re …’ I stopped and shrugged.
She laughed softly. ‘Never mind,’ she said, a smile in her voice. She brought her knees up an
d hugged them to her. ‘He’s here every day, Emmett. He could have taken Splotch and gone, long ago. But he didn’t.’
I cleared my throat. ‘He’s probably just bored.’
‘No. I know it’s meant to be, Emmett. I know.’ She leant forward and grabbed my wrist; I’d moved in spite of myself. ‘You can’t understand until it’s happened to you. But it will, Em.’ She drew in her breath. ‘The first time I saw Lucian … everything changed. I’d been waiting my whole life. Nothing will ever be the same again.’
I didn’t answer. Something rustled and pounced in the yard outside.
Alta didn’t say anything else. Her grip on my wrist stayed strong. I leant back in the chair and closed my eyes, trying not to think. The moonlight slid across the floor; every time I looked the shadows had crept lower and longer. I dozed, waiting for Alta to let go of me, but in the end I must have fallen asleep before she did, because when I woke it was morning and we’d both overslept. I could hear the cows complaining. I slipped out of the room without waking Alta and went to milk them myself; I didn’t know why, except that I wanted to be alone. As I poured the milk out and marked the pans in the dairy, and then saw to the other animals, I felt queasy with frustration and unease. We were breaking Alta’s heart, now, both of us; she just didn’t know it yet. Every day she spent with Lucian, thinking he was in love with her … and every day I spent with them together, aching for a word or a look and getting nothing … But it wasn’t my fault, it wasn’t fair. There had to be a neat, painless way to get rid of her. I racked my brain, trying to ignore the curl of shame in my stomach: I couldn’t stand another day of agony.
When Lucian arrived – swinging himself easily off his horse as though he’d slept like a dormouse – Alta was running round in stockinged feet, one boot swinging from her hand. She called down, ‘I’m coming, Lucian!’ and then shouted, ‘Em! Where’s my other boot? It was here yesterday!’
‘I expect one of the dogs got it.’ I watched her scamper from room to room. ‘Come in bare feet. I’m going up to look at the fallow land and see whether it’s ready to be harrowed. Darnay won’t care if you look like a beggar’s brat.’
‘Wait for me! It must be somewhere.’
‘Catch us up when you find it, then.’ I went down the stairs, while she bent to peer under the bed. She wouldn’t find it; it was in the attic, behind the furthest row of apple-boxes. I glanced casually at Lucian. ‘She’s lost her boot. She’ll be ages. Shall we go?’
‘All right.’ He raised his voice. ‘See you later, Alta!’ Then, in unison, we turned and half ran to the gate, knocking elbows as we jostled to be the first to get to the latch. When the gate shut behind us we sprinted away, giggling like kids. ‘That was mean,’ he said at last, breathless.
‘I know. Do you want to go back?’
‘No.’ We swapped a look, and ran faster. Splotch galloped beside us, barking with excitement as if it was a race.
And then we were diving through the archway, into the enclosed part of the ruins, out of sight; and finally we could touch each other, and for a long time nothing existed except his mouth and hands and skin against mine.
Afterwards, when we were quiet, he said, ‘Why did you hate me so much?’
‘Because you were so … lordly.’
He started to laugh. He was lying on his back with his forearm over his face to block the sun. In the end he rolled his head sideways, still grinning, so that he met my eyes. ‘Sorry. I’ve just never heard so much contempt in the word, before.’
‘You know what I mean. The way you stood there’ – I couldn’t be bothered to move, but I moved my shoulder in the direction of the courtyard – ‘like you owned the place.’
‘I do own the place. Well, almost.’
I pushed myself up to sit with my back against the wall. There was a daisy next to my leg and I began to pull it apart, petal by petal, like Alta playing a-little-a-lot-passionately-madly. ‘Your grandfather cheated mine out of this place,’ I said. ‘Did you know that? The woods where you said I’d been “poaching” … We owned all of this, until your grandfather hired a few lawyers and swore blind it had always belonged to the New House.’
Outside, Splotch burst into a flurry of barks. We drew apart a little, and I fumbled with my shirt-buttons; but after a second she fell silent again. Lucian let his head drop back on to the ground. ‘Frogs,’ he said. ‘No, I didn’t know that.’
‘And then you swept Alta off her feet like you had droit du seigneur. And when I got home my father was practically tugging his forelock.’
‘Because I’d just saved Alta’s life!’
‘I was there too. If you hadn’t been there, I’d have rescued her.’
‘If I hadn’t been there,’ Lucian said, ‘she wouldn’t have gone through the ice.’
‘You know?’
‘She told me.’
I squashed the bare daisy head with the ball of my thumb. Oh, Alta. She thought she was so sophisticated, but then she told him something like that. ‘She shouldn’t have.’
‘Emmett …’ He reached out, but I didn’t move. ‘You know I’m not going to hurt her, don’t you?’
‘What do you think this would do, if she knew?’
‘I meant it, you know. Give me the word,’ he said, very softly, ‘and I’ll marry her.’
I rubbed my face, as if there was a stain there I could wipe away.
He rolled over and stared at the cushions of moss that clung to the base of the wall. There was an ant climbing the stone, and he put out his finger so that it crawled across his knuckle.
‘Will you reconsider, about being my secretary? Forget the money. Save it for Alta’s dowry.’
I didn’t answer. He propped himself up on his elbow to flick the ant into the grass.
‘Please, Emmett. Think about it. You’d be good at it, I know you would. All that primitive peasant cunning – all right, all right!’ He let me wrestle him half-heartedly to the ground. Then he raised one hand and ran it through my hair, without meeting my eyes. ‘Come and stay with me tonight, at the New House. When you go home you can tell your parents that I wanted to interview you for the post.’
I let go of him. ‘What?’
‘Just for a night. A few nights. Please. I’ll send them a letter to explain.’
‘I can’t. You know I can’t. I have work to do. If I’m not there …’
‘You can’t be that important.’
I sat up. The sun was high in the sky; it was later than I’d realised. ‘It’s a farm, Lucian. The work doesn’t wait for you.’
‘Alta was ill for weeks. They can do without you for a few days. Please, Emmett.’
I struggled to my knees, fumbling with my shirt buttons. ‘I have to go.’
He caught my wrist. ‘I can’t stand being with you and Alta and having to pretend I only have eyes for her.’
I looked at him, and then away. Something scuttled in the wisteria above us and a flurry of petals drifted past, ivory edged with brown. A wood-pigeon called across the water, lazy and contented; a long, long way away I heard the sound of sheep, and the chiming of a clock.
‘All right,’ I said, and in spite of myself I let him draw me down to lie beside him.
He grinned. I thought that I’d never forget how he looked at that moment, his eyes narrowed against the light, a blade of grass clinging to his temple.
‘I know why you hated me,’ he said. ‘Because you wanted me, and you were scared.’
Lucian’s room in the New House was high up, under the eaves; it was cramped, with a sloping ceiling and a tiny iron fireplace, but it had a casement window that looked out on to the terrace and the ruined castle below. ‘It used to be a maid’s bedroom,’ he said, as I looked round. ‘I wanted to be as far from my uncle as possible.’ I glanced involuntarily towards the door, but he leant against the wall, his arms on either side of my head, trapping me. He smiled. ‘It’s fine,’ he added, ‘he sleeps in the trophy room, he doesn’t like the stairs because of
his gout. Also, he’s always drunk. So you can make as much noise as you want.’
‘Why would I want to make noise?’ He leant forward and bit my ear, and I laughed; then the air caught in my throat, and I had to concentrate on breathing before I drowned.
Time expanded and shrank to instants and eternities: a spasm of pleasure, sunlight on the ceiling, his fingers digging into my shoulder, half-darkness and the rich smell of wine that was older than we were. The weight of his ring on a string round my neck. He bent over me, picked it up in his mouth, and kissed me. The feel of the metal grating against my teeth, the taste of salt and stone and his saliva. Being woken at midnight by the clock in the stable block, and seeing him sitting on the window sill, outlined by the moonlight. The moon itself beyond the latticed glass: a pearl caught in a net. I didn’t even know who I was any more. I was new, I was a stranger, I was Lucian’s.
I had never been so happy. I didn’t know it was possible. When I woke in the morning I lay there, incredulous, nearly blinded by it, holding on to the edge of the bed as if I was shipwrecked. I should have been at home, working, but it felt as if I was thinking about someone else’s life, not mine. One way or another, the jobs would get done; it was a luxurious pleasure to lie still, listening to the birds, knowing that I was playing truant, not caring. It was late, and the sun was creeping up the side of the bed over the rumpled sheets and Lucian’s legs. He slept as though he’d been thrown away, one arm over his head, the veins on his wrist showing blue under the skin. In sleep his face seemed smoother, his mouth wider. I watched him for a long time, imagining him as a child and as an old man. Then, at last, I had to get up; partly because the pleasure of looking at him was too close to pain, and partly because I needed to piss.
I crept along the corridor in the thick summer silence, grimacing when the floorboards creaked. But I didn’t dare open any doors, in case I stumbled on the housekeeper – or, worse, Lucian’s uncle. In the end I opened a window at the top of a narrow flight of stairs and emptied my bladder into the flowerbed below. I thought I knew the way back to Lucian’s room, but I’d wandered too far and lost my bearings; I found myself in a long dark passageway, with closed doors on every side. It was so featureless and symmetrical that it made me uneasy. Finally I opened one of the doors as slowly and silently as I could, hoping to catch a glimpse of the window and the world outside: then at least I’d know which side of the house I was on. But when I peered round the edge of the door I saw that I needn’t have bothered to be careful. It was only a storeroom, with sloping ceilings and one stoury window at the far end, looking out over the drive and the woods beyond. The smell of baked dust wafted out, warm as a bath.
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