His father had served him well. Harry took the land, the produce of the land and the joy of ownership. His to enjoy, to use, to exploit or to abuse as the whim took him. There were no surprises in such an inheritance, and no sense in any heart (except mine) that what seemed so fair on the surface was part of a conspiracy to defraud me of my beloved home and to exile me from the one place on earth to which I could ever belong. My home was given away to the male newcomer, to the male stranger; he neither knew the land nor loved it, and yet it was his.
I heard the will read in a haze of hatred. Not towards Harry, who benefited despite his doltish silliness, but towards Ralph who had cost me my papa in return for this pittance of a dowry and this treasure for Harry. Harry had everything. I had lost the love of my papa, who would never have let me go, unhappy, into exile. And Ralph’s foul scheming had benefited only Harry.
After the petty bequests and little gifts, there was a personal message from Papa to Harry, exhorting him to care for the poor of the parish: standard rhetoric that no one would take seriously. But then Papa had written, ‘And I commend you, Harry, to take care of your mother, and my beloved daughter Beatrice – most dear to my heart.’
Most dear to his heart. Most dear. The tears, the first since his death, stung in my eyes and I choked on a great sob of grief that seemed to be tearing its way out of my chest.
‘Excuse me,’ I whispered to Mama and rose from the table and hurried from the room. In the open air on the front steps my sobs were stilled. He had called me ‘beloved’; he had told them all I was ‘most dear’. I breathed the smells of a late summer twilight and felt an ache like an illness, which was my longing for him. Then I walked bare-headed through the rose garden, through the little gate into the paddock and towards the wood down to the Fenny. My papa had loved me. He had died in pain. And the man who had killed him still lived on our land.
Ralph was waiting for me at the old mill. He lacked his mother’s gypsy second sight and he did not see his death when it walked towards him, smiling. He held out his arms to me and I went into his embrace and let him hold me and kiss me in the dark shadows of the barn.
‘I have been longing for you,’ he whispered in my ear as his hands moved quickly over my body, opening the front of my dress. I sighed as he smoothed my breasts and he bent his head and kissed me. His stubbled chin scratched my cheek and then my throat as his head dropped down the open gown. I shivered as I felt his warm breath on my neck.
Above us the last late swallows lined up on the old beam. I saw and heard nothing but the dark outline of his head and the steady, rapid sound of his breath.
‘Oh, it is so good to touch you,’ Ralph said earnestly, he pressed me backwards to a heap of straw and lifted my skirts and petticoats.
‘When we have each other and Wideacre, that will be a pleasure, eh, Beatrice? When we make love as man and wife in the great master bedroom at Wideacre? When I come to you like this, in the great carved bed under embroidered quilted covers and between fresh linen sheets like I was gentry born and bred?’
We closed together, and his words went unanswered as I clung to him, begging him to move faster and faster, harder and harder. I groaned like a dying man as easy passion overwhelmed our destiny and the world grew dark and still as if a great wave had washed over me and drowned me. Alone, I was yet enveloped and held by Ralph as he thrashed, and he groaned too and lay still. Then the feelings drained from me, and left me weak but clear-headed and cold as ice. I had a sense of deep, sudden sorrow for the pleasure that had gone so fast and left me so empty. And because that moment, that precise moment, would never come again.
‘That’s a good, dutiful wife,’ Ralph said, teasingly. ‘That is how it will be in the master bedroom. I shall sleep between linen sheets every night of my life, and you may bring me coffee in bed every morning.’
I smiled at him under my half-closed eyelids.
‘Shall we spend all our time here?’ I asked. ‘Or shall we go to London for the season?’
Ralph sighed luxuriously and lay back beside me, hands behind his head, his breeches still around his ankles.
‘I’m not sure,’ he said deliberately. ‘I’ll have to decide. Winter in town would be nice, but there’s the fox hunting and shooting here. I wouldn’t want to miss that.’
My lips curled in a smile, but no trace of sarcasm crept into my voice.
‘Do you think you can take my father’s place?’ I asked. ‘D’you think the county gentry will accept you when they’ve known you as Ralph, the gamekeeper’s lad, the son of Meg the gypsy and a runaway father?’
Ralph was unmoved. Nothing could penetrate his contentment. ‘I don’t see why not,’ he said. ‘I’m no worse than they were a dozen generations ago. I’ll have earned my place at Wideacre, which is more than they have done to gain theirs.’
‘Earned it!’ I could scarcely keep the disdain from my voice, but I kept my tone sweet. ‘Odd work you have done this day, Ralph! Murder and unchastity!’
‘Ah, hard words,’ Ralph said negligently. ‘A sin is a sin. I’ll take my chance at the Day of Judgement with this on my conscience. Any man in the country would have done the same. I’m prepared to stand alone. I don’t share the blame with you, Beatrice. I planned it. I’ll take the guilt and the consequences. I did the act – I did it partly for you and partly for our future together – but I’ll take the blame alone in this world or the next.’
The tension sloughed off me like a snake’s skin. It was his crime. I was innocent.
‘You did it quite alone?’ I questioned. ‘You had no one to help you at all? You spoke of it with no one but me?’
He tightened his grip on me and touched my face in a gentle caress. He had no idea his life hung on a thread. He had no idea when he had snapped that thread in two.
‘I work alone,’ he said proudly. ‘There’ll be no gossip in the village, no tongues wagging, no fingers pointing. I would not risk that for myself, and I would especially not risk it for you, Beatrice. I did it alone. No one but you and I know.’
He touched my face with his fingertips in one of his rare, precious caresses. I saw in his eyes and in his gentle smile his tenderness for me, and the slow and steady growth of a love that would last as long as our two hearts were beating in time with Wideacre. Despite my anger, I felt tears prickle behind my eyes and my mouth quivered when I tried to smile back at his loving face. How could I help but love him – whatever he was? He was my first love and had risked everything to give me the greatest gift any man would ever be able to give me: Wideacre.
I lost my childhood on the road on that damp spring day when my papa spoke of my banishment. I lost my contented, easy childhood in the moment when I realized he would take Wideacre from me, would take it to favour Harry, with no thought of me and my pain at all. But that hurt was healed when I lay in Ralph’s arms and knew he had gambled everything to have me and Wideacre. And my tears rose at the thought of the reckless, gallant gamble he had so utterly lost.
Ralph had a dream, a hopeless, impossible dream, that only a very young lover could have. The two of us, married despite the conventions, as if the world were some paradise where people may marry the love of their hearts and live where they wish. As if all that truly matters is love and passion and loyalty to the land.
It was a dream of the future that could never have been, and the only stupid mistake I ever saw Ralph make was to forget that however often we tumbled in straw, grass or bracken, or whatever I called out in my fainting pleasure at the strength and skill of his hard force, he was just a servant, the son of a slattern. And I was a Lacey of Wideacre. If it had been any other land I swear I would have sacrificed it for Ralph. If it had been any other house I believe I would have schemed to put him into it. Any other house in the land and Ralph should have slept in the master bed and