The Favoured Child

That brought his eyes up to my face. ‘Why should you care?’ he demanded coldly.

‘I am a Lacey,’ I said; and then, challenged by his stare, I went on, ‘I know it is all wrong now, but we were squires here. It is all wrong for the Laceys, and for Acre too, and I am sorry.’

His face warmed, but he did not smile. It was as though he had forgotten how to smile. ‘Eh,’ he sighed, like a man grieving. But then he was generous to me. ‘You were a babe in arms,’ he said. ‘No blame for you. I’ll get the men out for you, and we’ll find your cousin. Don’t fret.’ I nodded. ‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘Are you all right on that mare?’ he asked as he suddenly noticed me riding astride with shortened stirrups.

I beamed at him. ‘Yes!’ I said triumphantly. ‘I have trotted and cantered. But I shall go carefully home.’

‘You ride like Miss Beatrice did,’ he said, half to himself. ‘And you have her smile too. For a moment, seeing you up there, smiling like that, it was like the old days, before she went bad.’

‘Before she went bad.’ I heard his words over again in my head, and they sounded like a spell which might make everything suddenly clear to me. ‘She went bad,’ I repeated aloud. ‘What do you mean? My Aunt Beatrice was never bad.’

He gave me an ironic glance from under heavy dark brows. ‘No,’ he said. ‘That’s what they would have taught you, I dare say. We see it differently in Acre. But it’s an old tale, and little worth the telling.’

‘How do you see it in Acre?’ I asked. I was leaning forward in the saddle, staring at him as if he could explain so much. As if that one sentence about Beatrice’s smile before she went bad might tell me why we were so poor in the Dower House, and why the land around us had turned sour and grew nothing but weeds.

‘Not now,’ he said briefly, but I saw the closed-in look on his face which I saw on my mama when I asked her what went wrong with the Laceys and what caused the fire that night, all those years ago. ‘You’ve your cousin to think of now.’

I nodded. He was right. I shook my head to clear it of the mystery, and then I used my heel and the lightest of touches on the reins to turn Scheherazade and head for home.

The Acre lane is hard-packed mud, no good for cantering, and we took it at a brisk exhilarating trot. But the drive to Wideacre Hall is seldom used and is overgrown and grassy, and I could loosen her reins a little and let her stride lengthen into a smooth canter again. I did not check her until I saw the garden gate and Mama standing in the front garden; I thundered up, my hat tumbled behind me, my hair flying out over my shoulders, my eyes bright.

‘Julia!’ she exclaimed in horror. ‘What on earth…?’

‘Dench was driving me home when we found Scheherazade,’ I said breathlessly. ‘He took the carriage horse to ride and look for Richard and sent me to Acre to turn out the men, and then come home to you. Richard’s not here, is he? He didn’t walk home, did he?’

‘No, I was starting to worry,’ Mama said. ‘Oh! How dreadful if he should be badly hurt. But, Julia! You riding! How do you know how?’

‘I just did it, Mama!’ I said triumphantly. ‘As soon as I was on her back, I just knew how to do it! And she is so good, she is so gentle. I knew I would not come to any harm!’

‘But the men from Acre …’ said Mama, distressed. ‘Whoever did you speak to in Acre?’

‘Mrs Green at the mill, and then Ned Smith,’ I said. ‘They both said they’d help.’

‘Oh, dear,’ said Mama, overwhelmed by the sight of me thundering down the drive, riding like a poor girl with my skirts bunched up and straddling the horse, and by the impropriety of my giving orders in Acre, but most of all by her rising fear for Richard.

But then I saw her shoulders go back and her voice grow firm as she took command. ‘Take the horse to the stables and tell Jem to ride over to Havering,’ she said. ‘Tell him to tell her ladyship that Richard may be hurt and ask if we may borrow the carriage. You come inside at once.’

She ran up the path to the house and I heard her ring the bell for Stride. Then I just leaned forward slightly, and lovely Scheherazade knew what I wanted and walked towards the stable, her ears pricked for her stall. In the stable yard I swung down from her back and meant to land lightly on my feet. But as soon as my feet touched the paving slabs my knees turned to water and buckled under me so that, instead of confidently handing the reins to Jem, I could only slump in a crumpled heap at his feet, half laughing and half crying with the pain. Jem scooped me up and sat me on the mounting block, then lengthened Scheherazade’s stirrups so he could ride her over to the hall.

‘Will you be all right?’ he said, eyeing me. ‘Maybe I should see you into the house.’

‘I’m all right,’ I lied. In truth my arms and legs felt like pounded jelly. I ached in every bone, and my skin, where I had sat on the saddle, was scalding as if I had been burned. Jem rode Scheherazade up to the gate to the back garden and yelled through the archway for Mrs Gough. While his back was turned, I cautiously pulled up my skirt to see my legs. I felt I was bleeding, as if my legs were rubbed raw, but there were only a couple of red stripes where the saddle and the leathers had chafed me, and some wicked little red blood bruises where the soft skin had been trapped and pinched.

‘Gracious me!’ said Mrs Gough, standing over me, arms akimbo. ‘What a state you’re in, Miss Julia! Come inside this minute.’

I tried to rise to obey her, but as I did so, my knees gave way again, the ground beneath me looked like a series of steps, one level melting into another level. I looked up at Mrs Gough’s disapproving face and held out my hands to her. ‘I don’t feel very well,’ I said deprecatingly, and I dropped at her feet in a dead faint.

That was the end of my adventures for that day. Mrs Gough might be unsympathetic, but she was efficient. She had Stride carry me up the stairs to my bedroom, and sent up a bowl of soup with a dash of sherry in it, and a little bread. Despite my anxiety for Richard, I could not keep my eyes open and fell fast asleep.

And then I dreamed. A funny dream, all the events of the day mixed up and misunderstood, but with some feeling about them as if they were not me in the dream at all. A girl very like me. A girl like me but more firmly rooted in Wideacre than I. A girl who would never have tolerated a bullying playmate, a girl who was afraid of nothing. Not a quiet girl, not a shy girl. Not a good indoors girl at all. A girl that I would have been if I had not been my mama’s child. Like me, but with none of the wildness stolen from her.

She was on horseback, on a bay pony, but his bright summer coat was like Scheherazade’s had been in the autumn sunlight. And she was riding not in the woods where I had been that day but up along the little bridle-track to the slopes of the downs. She was me, and when she urged her pony fast up the pale muddy track, it was my laugh I heard, and when they broke out of the trees at the top of the downs, it was my sigh of delight. I looked to my right and there was a flock of sheep which I knew were my sheep, with a shepherd raising a hand in a lazy greeting, and I rode over to him and told him that the sheep were to be washed in the Fenny this afternoon and he smiled and pulled his cap to me as though I were the squire himself and able to order things on the land as I pleased.

I squinted up at the bright cold sky and looked at the horizon as if I owned it and I said to him, ‘It will rain later’, and he nodded as if there could be no doubt that I was right. He smiled and said, ‘Yes, Miss Beatrice’, and waved to me as I rode away.

I turned over in my bed in my sleep, and I heard a voice in my sleep saying, ‘The favoured child. The favoured child. She always was the favoured child.’

I opened my eyes then and blinked, as confused as a barn owl wakened at midday. I looked around the bare sunny bedroom. The blank walls reassured me that it was nothing but a meaningless dream. The shadows on the pale plaster showed me that I had only been asleep for a few minutes. I put out a hand and touched the empty soup bowl. It was still warm. I thought of Richard and made to rise from the bed to see if he was safe home, but my head was so swimmy I lay back on the pillow again until the room should steady. And while I waited for my head to clear, I dropped off to sleep again like an exhausted child.

I slept until mid-afternoon, and so I missed all the excitement of Richard’s return home. Dench had found him and brought him into Acre, slumped across the carriage horse, with Dench leading. He had broken a collar-bone and his left arm, and Dench had torn up his own shirt to make a temporary sling. Mama had sent the Havering carriage to Acre, and Ned the Smith and one of the Green lads had lifted Richard into it, tucked him up under one of the carriage rugs and sent him home. He was not in pain on the jolting journey, because Dench had given him some laudanum. Mrs Green had run out with the tiny precious phial as they walked past the mill. She had saved it from the bailiffs, resisted the temptation to sell it for food; and then given it away.

They put Richard to bed and called the surgeon from Midhurst, who praised Dench’s rough strapping, set the arm and the collar-bone and ordered Richard to stay abed for at least a week.

We had a peaceful few days then, Richard and I. He had a fever at first, and I sat with him and sponged his head with vinegar and water to cool him, and read him stories to divert him. By the fourth day he was well enough to talk and he asked me what had happened. I told him about Mrs Green, about Ned Smith, about Dench’s sudden decision in the sunlit wood to take the carriage horse and leave me to alert the village.

‘How did you get to Acre?’ Richard asked. He was lying back on a bank of white pillows and his face was still pale. His freckles stood out, dark as flecks of chocolate, on his creamy skin, and his gaze was down, his eyes veiled by his long eyelashes.

‘I rode,’ I said, and as I spoke the two words, my heart suddenly thudded in foreboding. I was sitting by the window to catch the wintry morning light, a book open on my knees. As I said the words ‘I rode’, it struck me for the first time that Richard might object to my having ridden – even in that emergency.

I could tell nothing of Richard’s mood from the untroubled curve of his mouth, from the dark lashes on his cheek. ‘Dench told me to take Scheherazade while he searched the wood for you. It seemed the only way to do it, Richard.’

Richard’s gaze stayed on the counterpane. ‘Dench told you to ride my horse,’ he said softly. ‘But, Julia,’ he said and then paused. ‘You do not know how to ride.’

‘I know!’ I said with a nervous laugh. ‘I know I do not!’ I said again. ‘But Dench threw me up into the saddle, and Scheherazade was so good! It must have been all that schooling you have given her, Richard!’ I shot a look at him, but his face was still impassive. ‘She knew her way home, of course,’ I said. ‘I just sat on her. It was not proper riding, Richard. Not proper riding like you do.’

‘No,’ he said softly. ‘Did you just walk?’

‘Not all the way,’ I said hesitantly.

‘Not all the way,’ he repeated as slowly as if he were writing down my answer in a copy-book. ‘She did not walk all the way. So, Julia, did you trot?’

‘Yes,’ I said quickly. Too quickly. ‘I trotted her a little.’

‘You trotted,’ he repeated again. ‘Your first time on horseback and you trotted? A rising trot, Julia? Or did you just bump about, clinging on and hoping for the best?’

‘I trotted properly!’ I said, stung. ‘And I cantered too!’

Richard’s head snapped up. His eyes were as black as the centre of a thundercloud.

‘You took my horse without my permission and you cantered her?’

‘Richard!’ I said desperately. ‘I had to! I had to! Dench told me to! He had to look for you and I had to call out Acre and come home and tell Mama. I could not refuse to go. Dench knew what to do and he ordered me!’

There was an utter silence.

‘Dench, was it?’ Richard asked.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘You should have refused,’ Richard said, a little frown on his face.

‘I didn’t know what to do!’ I said. ‘I didn’t know what to do, Richard. Dench seemed to know what had to be done, so I did as he told me.’

‘He never liked me,’ Richard said, gazing at the blank wall at the foot of the bed, seeming to see Dench’s impassive face on the pale lime-wash. He was seeing again in his mind Dench’s stony face as he watched Richard struggling to learn to ride, and Grandpapa’s impatience. ‘Not from the first riding lesson. Not before. He never liked me. He wanted you to have Scheherazade from the start,’ he said reflectively, reviewing the scene in the stable yard and remembering Dench’s smile as I walked towards the mare. ‘Then he used the excuse of my accident to get you on her.’

I said nothing. I knew it was none of it true. But the threat of Richard’s rage seemed to be passing away from me. I felt icy cold inside, and the thudding in my head, behind my eyes, warned me that I would have a dizzy nauseous headache unless I could get away at once from this stuffy room. I sat in silence on the window-seat, the cold pane of glass chilling my back, fearful to make a move in case Richard’s rage should come back towards me.

‘It’s Dench’s fault,’ he said.

‘Yes. Yes,’ I said, thinking only of my need to get away. Richard said nothing more, and I sat frozen.

He turned and looked at me and I saw with relief that his eyes were a hazy blue, as if he were daydreaming, as if he were happy. He smiled at me, smiled as sweetly as the dearest of friends. ‘Don’t look so terrified, Julia,’ he said as if it were rather funny. ‘I’m not angry with you any more. I thought it was your fault. But I see now that it was Dench’s.’

I smiled back, still wary.

‘You’re sure he ordered you?’ he asked. ‘You’re sure it was he who made you ride my horse? You didn’t think you would seize the chance selfishly for yourself?’

‘No! No!’ I said hastily. ‘It was all his idea.’

‘Good,’ Richard said, and smiled his seraphic smile at me. He put his right hand out to me and I reached forward and took it in my icy fingers. Obedient to his tug, I slid forward to kneel at his bedside and he put his hand to my face and stroked my cheek as gentle as a lover. Then he kissed my forehead, just where the headache was starting to thud, and at his touch I could feel my fear and strain melting away, and the beat of the pulse behind my eyes grow quiet again.

‘That’s better now, isn’t it?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ I said softly.

‘I hate it when we quarrel,’ he said, his voice low. ‘There is nothing worse in the world for me than when I think you have been selfish and ugly. You must love me like a true lady, Julia. You must be pure and unselfish.’

I blinked back the tears in my eyes. ‘I do try,’ I said humbly. ‘I try all the time, Richard.’

Richard smiled, his eyes warm. ‘I know,’ he said sweetly. ‘That is how it should be.’

Then I laid my head on his pillow and smelled the sweet nutty smell of his warm body and his dark curly hair and felt such a peace between us.

Richard was angry with me no more.

3

Richard’s convalescence from the fever and the mending of his collar-bone and arm progressed without any problems. The surgeon came from Midhurst again to make sure the break was healing and he told Mama he would not need to call again. Richard was irritable during the days when he was cooped up in his tiny low-ceilinged bedroom, but once he could come downstairs for his meals – looking very grand in Grandpapa’s old jacket for a dressing-gown – he became his old sweet-tempered self. I thought that his short temper over Scheherazade had come from the fever and the pain and the very great blow it had been to his pride that I should be seen riding a horse which had just thrown him.

Bearing that in mind, I was discreet in my visits to the stables with crusts of stale bread for Scheherazade. I did not dream of riding her again, and I scowled at Dench when I met him chatting with his nephew Jem in our stable yard and he told me of a ladies’ saddle he had found which was being sold cheap.

‘I am not allowed to ride her,’ I said as I might have said, ‘Get thee behind me’ to my greatest temptation. ‘She is Richard’s horse, not mine.’

‘He can’t ride her,’ he said frankly. ‘He was always afraid of her, she was always unsettled with him. Tell him that you’ll ride her for him while his arm’s mending. Jem’ll give you a few hints on how to manage her.’ Jem beamed at me and nodded. ‘She needs exercising,’ Dench said. He made it sound as if I would be doing Richard a favour instead of giving myself the greatest joy I could imagine. ‘No horse likes to be neglected. She’ll get bored and fretty locked up in the stable all the time. Tell Master Richard that she needs to go out. He can watch you ride himself if it makes him feel any better.’

‘I’ll tell Mama she needs exercising,’ I said. ‘But I don’t know if I’ll be allowed to ride her.’

‘Pity,’ he said succinctly.

Jem nodded. ‘You should stand up for yourself, Miss Julia,’ he said. ‘You’re the Lacey, after all.’

I said nothing.

‘D’you want to lead her down to the orchard?’ Jem suggested.

‘Oh yes!’ I said. Jem turned to fetch her from the loose box and she came out in a rush. Dench stepped quickly aside and put a hand up for her head collar, but I stayed still. She stopped before me, as though it were me she had been in a hurry to see, and she dropped her lovely huge chestnut head to sniff at the front of my gown. I held her soft nose and laid my cheek along it.

Then I saw a movement at the library window, and I froze. Richard was watching me. As soon as I saw him, I moved, instinctively, away from the horse, ashamed as if he had caught me rifling his possessions or reading his private letters. I lifted my hand in a little wave, but Richard did not respond. He stepped back from the window before Jem and Dench had turned to see who was there.

‘Richard was watching,’ I said feebly. ‘I won’t take her to the orchard, Jem. You do it.’

Jem made a hissing noise through his teeth and clipped a rope on to the head collar. He and Dench exchanged one sour look, but said nothing.

‘I must go,’ I said, and turned away from the horse, the lovely horse, and went back to the parlour.

It was a quiet day, like all the other days, and the only excitement of the afternoon came when Richard and I were playing piquet at the parlour table and I won one hundred and fourteen pounds in buttons. Richard declared himself bankrupt and ruined and tossed down the cards. He glanced across at my mama, sitting at the fireside, and asked her, as if he had just thought of the question, ‘Mama-Aunt, what is Lord Havering going to do about Dench?’

‘Dench?’ my mama repeated in surprise. ‘What about Dench?’

Richard looked blank. ‘Surely he has been reprimanded,’ he said, bewildered. ‘After taking such dreadful risks with Julia’s safety that day?’

Mama paused. ‘I was very shocked at the time,’ she said. ‘But when he brought you home, I was so relieved to have you safe that I said nothing. It was all such a rush!’

‘I would have expected you to be more concerned about Julia,’ Richard said, still surprised. ‘Didn’t she faint when she got home?’

‘Yes …’ Mama said.

‘If she had fainted on horseback, she could have fallen and broken her neck,’ Richard interrupted. ‘Dench should never have put her on Scheherazade. She could have been badly thrown. Scheherazade had just thrown me, and I had been well taught and riding for months.’

Mama looked appalled. ‘I should have thought …’ she said guiltily. Then she turned to me. ‘But you seemed so confident,’ she said, ‘and you rode her so well! You could obviously control her. I just assumed you had been riding her around the paddock when Richard’s back was turned!’

‘No!’ I said at once. ‘I never did that. I had never ridden her before. Dench told me to get on her, so I did.’

‘It was very wrong to send Julia off on a big dangerous horse for her first ride alone,’ said Richard. ‘Astride too…and through Acre!’

Mama frowned. ‘I have been careless,’ she said. ‘I did not think about it once I had you both safe home, but you are right, Richard. I shall speak to Mama about it.’

She shook her head with worry and bent to snip a thread from her sewing. When she looked up, she smiled at Richard in gratitude. ‘What a good head of the household you are, Richard!’ she said. ‘You are quite right!’.

I smiled too at the praise for Richard, and Richard sat back in his chair and beamed at us both with confident masculine authority.

We saw Lady Havering the next day when she called on her way to Chichester to see if we needed any purchases. I saw Mama talking long and earnestly at the carriage window and I knew that Lady Havering would strongly disapprove of Dench for being careless with my safety; that she would be appalled to learn that I had been riding astride with my skirts pulled up, and through Acre too! I only hoped Dench had nothing worse to face than one of my grandpapa’s bawled tirades. I knew he would be utterly untroubled by that.

But everything went wrong. Grandpapa was not at home, and in his absence Lady Havering ruled at the hall. She did not go to Chichester after hearing Mama’s complaint; instead she drove straight home to the hall, stiff-backed with ill-founded outrage. She drove straight to the hall and into the stable yard and turned Dench off. She gave him a week’s wages and no reference, and she would not hear one word from him.

He packed his bags and left the room above the stables where he had lived for twenty years. He walked the long way back to Acre village, where his brother and his family lived, dirt poor. Then after dinner – rye bread and gruel – he walked up to the Dower House, where only recently he had driven the Havering carriage with Richard inside, and Mama had cried and blessed him.

Stride was out, so Mrs Gough came to the parlour and told us that Dench was at the back door. Mama looked indecisive.

‘I hope he isn’t drunk and rowdy,’ Richard said apprehensively.

That tilted the balance for Mama, and she went to her writing-box and wrapped a florin in a twist of paper. ‘Tell him that I am sorry he has been turned off, but that I can do nothing about my step-papa’s household,’ she said awkwardly. ‘Give him this from me.’

‘I’ll tell him,’ Mrs Gough said truculently. ‘The idea of dunning you in your own house!’ She stumped from the room, the coin clutched in her hand.

Although the baize door to the kitchen was shut, we could hear her voice raised, berating Dench, and his voice shouting in reply. I looked at Mama. Her face was ashen and I realized she was afraid.

‘It’s nothing, Mama,’ I said gently. ‘Mrs Gough has a sharp tongue, and I dare say Dench is just giving as good as he gets. It’s nothing more than that.’

‘He’s a bitter man,’ Richard contradicted me. ‘I hope this matter ends here. I do not like the thought of him coming to the house, nor hanging around the village making trouble against us. Lord Havering says that Acre is a powder-keg of trouble-makers. Dench is just another one to add to the fuel.’

The kitchen door banged loudly and I saw my mama flinch. But I was thinking of Dench, who had done nothing so very wrong and was now out of a job. He had to walk home again, all the way down the drive and the lane towards Acre, with his head down, watching the toes of his boots which would not last for ever with the walking he would have to do to find work.

I excused myself from the room and slipped out into the hall. The front door was unlocked, and I threw on my cloak and let myself out. I could dimly see Dench ahead of me down the drive, walking back to Acre. Even at that distance I could see that his shoulders were slumped. His stride had lost its swing. I ran after him.