Bitter Eden (2 page)

James took his daughter's arm and walked to the dining room, stopping before Meg. He held his hands up for inspection like a naughty school boy. Seeing his broad grin, Natalie did the same as her father. Meg gently boxed their ears and hurried them into the room.

Anna, Frank's perpetually earnest wife, squeezed Meg's arm. "He likes to tease you."

"Which of this crew doesn't?" Meg asked quickly.

Frank glanced over the table, his eyes riveting on the two empty seats. "Where are Peter and Rosalind? Why haven't they been called to . . "

Anna gave him a nudge in the ribs. His face grew sterner. 'They belong here at the table/'

James caught the look of quick responsive anger on Stephen's face and said quickly, "We'll begin without them."

"It is not right that they aren't here to join us. It merely encourages Peter . . ."

"Pa said we'd begin without them," Stephen said loudly. "Why don't you mind your own business, Frank?"

Frank looked at Stephen, appalled, then glared at his father. "Well, Pa, perhaps now you'll listen to me. Out of the mouths of babes . . ."

"I'm not a babe! Why can't you leave Peter alone? At least he does something. He believes in something."

"Stephen! Frank," Meg said, then looked to James.

"You have both said enough," James said.

Frank adjusted his immaculate collar. "Ma is not the only one who cannot fathom that our position in this parish is changing. Peter will act like a common field hand till his death if something is not done about him, and now he is influencing Stephen as well."

"Peter is nothing like a common field hand," Stephen said hotly. "He . . ."

"You're right. He's worse, and all the more dangerous," Frank said, then turned his attention to James. "How long do you intend to indulge his irresponsibility at a cost to this family? Will you close your eyes until it is too late for Stephen as well?"

James concentrated on his soup, looking up momen-

tarily from beneath craggy eyebrows. "Soup is delicious. Let's not spoil it with disagreeable talk/'

"Better to allow him to spoil our good name with every important person in the district."

"He's hardly doing that/' James said mildly.

"No? The first thing Mrs. Foxe asked me yesterday when I saw her was about Peter. Is the dear boy still consorting with the rabble?' she asks. His rides and speechmaking are the illest kept secrets hereabouts. How long do you think it will be before Albert catches him at it? Then it will be public disgrace rather than gossip."

"Albert does say that Peter will be caught and punished, Papa," Natalie said. It was the first time she had spoken since Peter had stormed into the house and the argument had begun.

"Albert Foxe has a tendency to think the worst of everyone and everything, Natalie. I wouldn't put too much faith in what he says, particularly where it concerns your brother. You must remember Peter and Albert grew up together, always competed. There may be a modicum of jealousy involved. Peter has nothing to do with rabble of any sort. Keep that in mind, and I don't expect to hear it mentioned again."

"Sol You do condone his activities!" Frank said.

"I condone nothing, but neither will I have one of my sons betrayed by the loose tongue of another! I will talk with Peter. The rest of you learn to keep quiet about what is private business in this house. That applies particularly to you, Natalie. We are pleased you'll be marrying Albert, but he is the magistrate and for the moment what he does not know will help your brother."

"I know, Papa," Natalie said softly. "But please talk to Peter. I don't like lying to Albert. He will be my

husband after all, and he always asks me so many questions about Peter/'

'Til talk to him," James said and changed the subject to the price of some horses Frank wanted to buy from the Foxes.

Frank's eyes glittered. Now was the time to get his father's agreement to buy. He thought of it as a well-earned bribe. Everything came easy to Peter, but Frank had td connive and maneuver for every scrap he got. He smiled. James would be pliable in order to avoid difficulty between his two oldest sons.

After dinner James and Meg lingered at the table, talking and enjoying one last cup of tea. Fretfully Meg brought up Peter's name again. "Is there so much danger in helping the laborers, James?"

"Not so much now. Frank is worried about the other landowners' opinions. No one takes kindly to having his hay ricks burned, or a horde of night riders trampling through fields."

"But Natalie says Albert questions her. Why should he be so interested if . . ."

"Albert is the magistrate, perhaps the most diligent we've ever had. We'd all be better off if Albert did not take himself so seriously." James cleared his throat and looked at Meg from under his brows. "And we have the good fortune of soon having him as a son-in-law."

"Oh, James, what a way to talk," Meg scolded. "You're as pleased as I that Natalie and Albert will marry. He's young and will make a good husband for her, and it doesn't hurt to have our daughter the mistress of Foxe Hall; you've said so yourself."

"AH true. I've said it and I meant it, but do I have to like him as well?"

As the minutes passed and no strident noises were

heard from upstairs, James began to feel more kindly toward everyone, even Albert. Perhaps, he thought, hope reviving, Rosalind and Peter had reached an amicable, or better still, an amorous agreement. Perhaps for one night Peter would not ride out with the haphazardly organized laborers. "Meg, is there another piece of pie left?" He handed her his empty cup to be refilled as well.

What James hoped was taking place upstairs, however, was not. He had taken his first bite of pie when Peter came into the dining room. He hastened to his mother, kissing her cheek and whispering apologies into her ear. His face highly colored and relaxed, Peter was handsome, with a boyish impetuosity as youthful and alluring at twenty-six as it had been when he was sixteen.

James did not know from whence it came, but his children had been blessed—or cursed—with beauty. The exception was Frank, who looked much like James himself. Natalie, Stephen, and Peter had gathered their looks from some long forgotten ancestors, James concluded, for it was certain neither he nor Meg had bestowed the evenness of feature or brightness of eye these three had.

Peter chatted easily, teasing his mother. She rose to his bait, scolding and making faces of great pain. How could he talk to a lady so, even if she were his mother? Undaunted, Peter continued. Soon, in a pretense of anger, Meg hurried from the room, forgetting at least for the night her fear that he would be riding the countryside.

After Meg left the dining room, Peter rang the bell and asked the serving girl for a cold supper for himself, and then ordered her to take something upstairs for Rosalind. He ate quickly, businesslike, his mind already on the night's ride.

James sat watching the lines of concentration deepen along his son's brow and under his eyes. He knew what occupied Peters thoughts. His own were similarly occupied far too often. He knew that his son was right, and yet he wished fervently that Peter would turn his back on the chaos of the English farm laborers. Couldn't someone else challenge the system?

In Kent and other southeastern counties, farm laborers were rioting. To the powerful landed gentry, it made revolution in England seem fearfully possible. Every minor disturbance reminded propertied Englishmen of the violence of the French revolutionaries. Perhaps because of their deep fear of mob violence, the wealthy also had an attitude of callousness toward the suffering of the poor, which couldn't be penetrated. But if the well-to-do viewed the poor lower classes with cold indifference, they viewed the vocal radicals—who stirred up the peasants with their talk of justice and equality—with the ferocity of animals protecting their lairs.

James remained silent until Peter shoved his plate aside and rose to leave. He was dressed in dark clothing. In his hands was a dark seaman's knit cap to cover his blond hair.

"Must you go tonight?" James asked, wishing he had been able to keep his silence. "All men deserve a night's sleep once in a while."

Peter's eyes met his father's and held. Slowly he shook his head; his voice was low. "One night would become two. ... I'd like too much to stay home, Pa, to risk doing it even once."

James didn't argue. Again he understood, and chastised himself for being a coward. But he couldn't help it. He didn't want his son sacrificed for a cause that could be settled only when the time was right. A

handful of farm laborers could not force that time to come.

He walked with Peter to the door and stood in the damp cold until his son had disappeared into the darkness; then he tunled back to the house and sat in his chair, his heart filled with dread, his mind a jumble of worries and memories.

Peter was fighting a changing world that temporarily could not accommodate both its technical advances and its people. Unemployment was high; machines that could do the work of many were becoming common. Frank Berean looked upon the machinery as a boon: it was new, it was efficient, it meant more money in his pockets. Peter Berean deplored the rapid advance of machinery, for men he knew found themselves replaced by it, unable to feed their families. James shook his head sadly. What he could see—and neither of his sons could—was that each of them believed in progress and each had chosen a different aspect of it. Frank believed in technological advance, and Peter fought for social progress. Neither could be denied. There was no right or wrong to it, but with it came desperation. Out of the turmoil and confusion a phantom leader, Captain Swing, had emerged to lead the laborers to riot. Their hope was small—the past instructed that there would be few men of power or importance willing to listen to men of their class—but their desperation was great, and they would try anything. History deals with populations, but men die individually, and only once.

James got up to pace the room, then returned to the window. His thoughts continued worrisome and agitating. Reform was haphazard. Politics, he thought, is an erratic beast that either plods with bone grinding caution awaiting the popularity of its cause, or charges with eye dazzling speed and no thought to

consequence, bringing with it revolution. After the economic collapse of 1829, the beast had gone both ways at once. The emerging nations were quick to commit themselves to the machinery that would make them great powers, and painfully slow to recognize the devastating impact the industrial revolution would have on its poor.

James wondered how much of the responsibility for Peter's restless crusading he should take on his own conscience. In some respects it had been his own life's choices that had determined Peter's choice now.

James Berean had been born the youngest son of a baronet. He had grown up with privileges and some rank, and then had acquired in his youth an idealistic, romantic love of the simple, rustic life. It was a malady common to young men of his class, but James's infatuation with the rustic was augmented by his falling in love with Meg Wharton, the daughter of a tenant farmer. There was no question of James's family's approving of the marriage, so he had married without their approval, and turned his back on wealth and position with all the cocky assurance of youth.

He became a tenant farmer like his father-in-law. He had expected to live the rest of his life as a tenant farmer just as his father had acidly predicted. That prediction had proven untrue. But his father had made another prediction, and that one had come painfully true. James began to see life as he never thought it could be. He saw for the first time that privilege came with land. Respect came with land. Dignity came with land. Without land he was nothing.

As a tenant farmer he was thought to have no opinion of value. Things that James had taken for granted while growing up were now denied him. How could he have known his education was a privilege of the rich? He hadn't—not until it had come time for his

own three sons to be educated. It was believed that the poor didn't need education. It would only give them ideas. Places had to be kept, and part of the keeping was ignorance. Frank, Peter, and Stephen would never have learned their languages, history, or letters if James had not humbly returned to his family seeking their forgiveness and aid. When the opportunity came for him to buy Gardenhill House, James thankfully left the rustic life behind and moved into the landed class again.

Peasant life had been a galling experience for James, but a learning one. And it had been an experience that had, at least in part, formed the character of the son he now worried about. Peter had only been a child, but the taunts of the wealthier boys had remained with him, as had his teachers' willingness to conclude he was stupid because he was not a young lord or squire. He had been judged by what he owned and found wanting. The injustice of it was something he had never forgotten, and he would always believe that any man wanting to advance by his own labors should have the right to do so. So Peter spent his nights with * the men who sought to better their positions, endangering his marriage by his absences, and his life by his presence among the outlaw workers. And James could not honestly tell him it was wrong.

Chapter 2

The night sky was opaque and black when Peter went to the stable. The horse started nervously as Peter fumbled and lit the lantern. The damp cold made his fingers stiff; the frosted metal of the lantern stung his flesh. Filled with misgivings, he harnessed and saddled his horse. Tonight, unlike other nights, he could not quell his disquieting uncertainty. Thoughts of Rosalind intruded, distracting him from his purpose. Forcibly he pushed them back, concentrating on the events before him. He extinguished the lantern and led the roan from the stable; then with a brief backward glance at James's distorted silhouette in the diamond-shaped windows, he rode out of the farmyard, across the open pasture, and into the shrouded woods.

He wound his way over familiar but unseen woodland paths. As he approached a clearing, he slowed the roan to a walk. Over the horse's head he waved a white kerchief. A man moved out from the dark mass of a tree and waved him through.