The Favoured Child (60 page)

M
ama was sitting up in bed, drinking her morning chocolate, when I tapped at her door after changing into my riding habit and brushing the hawthorn petals from my hair.

‘Good morning!’ she said as I came in. ‘The Queen of the May herself! Do you have magical powers this morning, my dear? Could you give me eternal youth and beauty, please?’

I laughed. ‘I think you have it already, Mama,’ I said, sitting on the foot of her bed. ‘You have looked quite unfairly pretty ever since Uncle John came home.’

Mama smiled. ‘That is from being happy,’ she said lightly. ‘But how are you? Are you tired after your dawn chorusing?’

I stretched. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Feeling lazy, but not tired, though it is a longer walk than I thought. I always ride up that hill; I’ve never walked it before.’

‘You could have a rest before breakfast,’ Mama offered. ‘Or perhaps you should go back to bed and I will wake you at noon.’

I got up from the bed and went across to her window-seat. ‘Don’t tempt me,’ I said. ‘If the village is merrymaking, it is my job to check the animals. I shall go up to the downs after breakfast and see the sheep, and then down to the Fenny fields to see that the cows are well.’

Mama nodded and threw back the bed covers and slipped out of bed. ‘You put me to shame,’ she said. ‘I had thought we would all take a holiday!’

The garden gate banged.

‘Who is that?’ she asked, pulling on a wrapper and coming over to the window to stand beside me.

‘Jem is just back from the London stage with letters,’ I said, going towards the door. ‘Maybe there’s something from James!’

I sped down the stairs and nearly collided with Jenny Hodgett taking the letters from Jem at the front door. ‘Any for me?’ ‘I asked.

Jenny turned, smiling. ‘Yes, Miss Julia,’ she said. ‘From your young man, by the looks of it.’

I took it. It had James’s familiar sloping writing on the envelope, but it had been franked for him. It had been posted in England.

‘Jenny!’ I exclaimed. ‘This was posted in England. James is home!’

She beamed back at me and I clutched the letter in both hands. ‘I’ll read it in the stables,’ I said, suddenly wanting to be alone and uninterrupted. ‘I’ll be in for breakfast, tell Mama.’ I slipped out of the front door and down the garden path and through the side gate to the stable yard.

Jem had gone back to his room above the tack room and the stables were deserted. Misty was in her loose box where I had put her, still with her saddle and bridle on, her wreath of blossoms on a hook outside her stable. I opened her door and slipped into her stable, and sat down on an upturned bucket. She nuzzled the top of my head gently and I smelled her oaty breath as she sniffed at me. The letter crackled as I slit the envelope and spread it on my knee, leaning towards the half-door of the stable to catch the light.

It was brief.

I reached a hand up and stroked Misty’s flank without being aware of the warmth of her smooth coat beneath my fingers. James was coming home at last, and there was no hitch, no difficulty. He might joke about being ready to marry tomorrow, but I knew James. If he told me, even in jest, that he was ready to marry, then he was. And, God knew, I was ready to be his wife.

I got to my feet, thinking to go into the house and tell Mama that James was home and to ask Mrs Gough for the best dinner she could devise for the day he was to arrive – but then I paused. I wanted to be somewhere quiet and alone for a little while longer. The happiness I had in this gentle sunlit morning was
too much to mislay amid a hustle of menus and gowns and preparations. I tightened Misty’s girth and led her out of the stable to the mounting-block. I folded the letter and tucked it neatly into the little pocket of my riding jacket. Then I rode Misty out of the stable yard and turned her right up the drive towards Wideacre Hall.

I rode carelessly, on a loose rein, dreaming of how it would be when James came to me, whether I could go and wait for him at the Acre corner, and if he would drive himself or come in a post-chaise, whether he would smile to see me patient at the corner, or whether I would look foolish, like a village girl waiting for her swain. I passed all my dresses in rapid review, thinking which would suit me the best and wondering if I had any new gowns he had not seen in Bath which he might like. And I thought about the menu for his dinner, and what were his favourite cuts of meat and what puddings he cared for. I smiled as I rode, at peace in a little golden reverie of joy, because James was coming home.

The builders had taken the May holiday, so the garden and the new hall were deserted. I rode past the terrace towards the rose garden. I wanted to sit in the sunshine and dream a little more before I went home to tell Mama that we must start to prepare for my wedding day. I hitched Misty to the trellis on the old summer-house and went inside. It was sheltered here, warm. The birds were singing in the woods around the garden, and the summer-house smelled pleasantly of dry leaves and crumbling timber. I sat on the floor, careless of my cream riding habit, and leaned my head back against the wooden wall. With James’s open letter in my hand, I closed my eyes and dozed, still smiling, still dreaming of the day when he would be with me.

It seemed, at first, part of that dream – a kiss, as light as a butterfly’s wing, as soft as a feather on my cheek. I smiled and stirred, not opening my eyes. It seemed part of the dream of James, part of that previous dream in the summer-house when I had been a girl, when I had been Beatrice. I felt as tranced, as dreamy as I had then, and I relaxed, as contented as a sleeping
child on the dusty floor of the summer-house, and felt my face covered with kisses. The weight of him came on me gently, warm. As feckless as Beatrice herself, I put my arms around his neck and welcomed his touch. He kissed me on the mouth and I opened my lips in pleasure.

The touch of his tongue in my mouth was like ice.

My eyes flew open, I jerked my head away.

It was Richard.

At once I struggled to be up and away from him, but he did not let me up. His weight, which I had welcomed, was suddenly a weapon. He was pinning me down, and I was not able to struggle against him to throw him off.

‘Richard!’ I said in anger. ‘Let me up! Let me up this minute!’

He said nothing in answer, he would not even meet my eyes. Instead he reached down and fumbled with my skirts and petticoats, ignoring my ineffectual pushes against his chest.

I gasped. Richard had pulled my skirt up to my waist. I had a sudden recollection of the goshawk bating away in a frenzy of terror. I struggled to get my left hand free and I slapped his face as hard as I could.

He shook his head like a bullock stung by a horse-fly and grabbed for that hand. His weight pinned my other arm between his body and mine. I wriggled, but I was helpless.

‘Richard!’ I said more loudly, sharply. There was a hard note of panic in my voice. I heard it, and Richard heard it too. He looked at me then for the first time. His eyes were blank, a glazed blue, bright as glass, expressionless. Then he pushed one hard knee between my legs and parted them, bruising the flesh.

I screamed.

I screamed without thinking if there could be anyone in earshot. I screamed out of terror, without thought of managing Richard or of dealing with him. I screamed in the same mindless fright as that of the goshawk who had launched herself blindly into the air, forgetting she was held fast.

At once, as if my scream were a signal, he twisted the wrist he
was holding so tightly that the skin burned with pain and, though I opened my mouth to scream again, all I could do was gasp in horror as I heard the slight click of a small bone breaking, and felt my whole arm, my whole body, burn with pain. Richard dropped my hand and put his palm over my mouth instead.

‘If you struggle, I shall break the other wrist,’ he said softly, almost conversationally. ‘If you scream, I will strangle you. I will strangle you until you lose consciousness, Julia, and then I will do what I have to do, and then I may tighten my hands a little more. Do you understand?’

His face was so close to mine. I could feel his breath on my cheek. He was not panting, he was breathing evenly, steadily; he might have been taking a gentle stroll.

‘Richard…’ I said in a frightened whisper, ‘don’t do this, Richard, please. Why are you doing this?’

His smile was darker and his eyes more navy blue than I had ever seen them. ‘You were going to bring in a rival squire,’ he said. His voice was a thread of hatred. ‘You were going to build a bigger house than Wideacre Hall. I read it in his letter. While you slept there, beside
my
house on
my
land, you were dreaming of bringing in a rival squire and claiming half of our land.’

I opened my mouth to disagree, my mind scrambling like a trapped animal for some way out.

‘You are my betrothed,’ Richard said. ‘I was a fool to let you leave Wideacre and a fool to try to win you back kindly. Now I am going to claim you for my own.’

His words, and their meaning, sank in.

‘Richard, no!’ I said. I could feel my throat tightening with terror. This nightmare in the summer-house was too like the bullying of our childhood. I could feel myself slipping from courage, from the strong abilities of my womanhood, into the panic-stricken victim that I had really been when we were children.

‘It will hurt,’ he said with unconcealed pleasure. ‘I think you will be afraid, Julia.’

‘No!’ I screamed, but my throat had clamped tight and no cry
came out. I croaked silently, and Richard guessed that I was now too afraid to make a sound, and his eyes sparkled in utter delight.

He put one hand down and loosened his breeches and pulled them down. Then, with one hand holding my wrist, the other back over my mouth, forcing my head back on the dusty floor, he reared away from me, and with one hating, savage thrust he pushed into me, and my scream of pain was choked on his hard hand and my sobs retched in the depth of my throat.

It was like a nightmare, like the worst of nightmares, and it did not stop. While my hurting body registered the pain, I tried to find some courage from somewhere to say, ‘Well, it is done.’ But it was not done. Richard pushed into the blood and the hurt flesh again and again and again. He seemed to take delight in paining me so badly that I was screaming for help inside my head and hot tears were spilling down my face.

He gave a great shudder at the pinnacle of the very worst of it and then he collapsed and dropped his weight upon me as if I were nothing more to him than a bale of straw.

I lay spreadeagled on the dusty floor, where once I had dreamed of passion, with the tears pouring down my cheeks in a morass of pain and misery. I could feel I was bleeding, I could feel a bruise forming on my thigh where he had knelt upon me; but I could not comprehend the pain inside me.

He rolled off me and then was suddenly alert, looking out of the open doorway. He jumped to his feet, without a word to me, and, hitching his breeches, ran down the steps into the rose garden as if all the fiends of hell were after him. He ran from me as if he had murdered me indeed and he was leaving a sprawled body. I lay still, as he had left me, and I stared at the white roof and at the little hole in the timbers where the blue sky showed through, and I felt a little trickle of blood between my legs.

My belly seemed to have gone into some sort of regular spasms of pain, for every now and then it eased, but then there was a great wave which came over me and made me gasp and bite the back of my uninjured hand so as not to cry out. My broken wrist was throbbing, and I could see it was bruised black and swelling.

I lay on the dusty floor with my pretty cream riding habit pulled up to my waist and my hair tumbled down and spread in the dust, and I knew myself to be so broken and destroyed that it would have been better for me if Richard had completed his threat and strangled me while I lay there.

I don’t know how long it was before I sat up. I did not think, I did not think at all about what had happened, or what I could do. All I could think of was an urgent, passionate need to be home. I wanted to be in my bedroom with the door locked. I wanted to be in my bed with the covers up over my head. I sat up, and then I took hold of the doorjamb and heaved myself to my feet. I staggered, but I did not fall. I seemed to have stopped bleeding. My dress was unmarked. I held tight to the door and took one shallow step at a time into the rose garden.

Misty was gone. I shut my eyes and then opened them again in the hopes that I was mistaken, that she was where I had left her. But she had pulled her reins free and taken herself off home.