Lady Querry half screamed at the insult and Mrs Williams strode around from the desk to the door.

‘You had better go!’ she hissed.

‘I am going,’ I said. ‘And I am not coming back, and neither is Rosie Dench. And if I hear one word from you about calling Rosie a thief or about this ridiculous debt, I shall tell everyone that you are no better than a slave-driver. I shall tell them how Rosie was when I found her. And I shall tell them that you pay her five shillings for her most beautiful work, and how you sell the gloves for five pounds. And I will go on doing it until I have cost you far more than eight pounds and four shillings in lost custom. I shall go on doing it until you are ruined.’

I rounded on Lady Querry as she sat, mouth agape, drinking in every word. ‘And when you repeat this to all your friends, your ladyship,’ I said scathingly, ‘remember to tell them that their gloves and their stockings and their shawls are embroidered in filthy rooms by girls with consumption, and smallpox, and fevers. That the shifts which you buy to wear next to your skin have been touched, every inch of them, by girls with sores on their hands. That they are sold to you at a price which would make all those girls well, and well fed if they saw even half of it.’

I spun round then and marched to the carriage and climbed up on to the seat, still trembling with rage and my head still ringing with things I wanted to say. In my fury I saw James sweep a low bow to Lady Querry and even to Mrs Williams.

‘Good day, ladies,’ I heard him say pleasantly, and then he strolled out to the phaeton, and climbed on to the box and took up the reins.

I said nothing until he had turned left into George Street.

‘How could you just sit there?’ I said through my teeth. ‘You said you would speak to her, and you left it all to me. I felt an utter fool and they were all laughing at me and you did nothing, nothing! And then you said, “Good day” to them when we left. “Good day, ladies.” Ladies! How could you?’

James waited for a sedan chair to get out of the way before turning up the hill to Gay Street. ‘I wanted to see how you would do,’ he said. ‘I wanted to see how you would stand up to her.’

‘What?’ I shrieked.

‘I wanted to see how you are when you are being a squire,’ he said. He pulled the horse to a standstill and got down from the seat and came around to my side to help me down. I scrambled down on my own and pushed past him. If I could have knocked him down and walked over him, I would have done so. He seemed to me entirely part of the unfeeling Quality world who laughed like Lady Querry. I would never, never forgive him for saying, ‘Good day, ladies.’

I stormed up the steps and found I could scarcely see the door knocker for the tears of anger in my eyes. James reached over my shoulder and tapped at the door for me.

‘I wanted to ask you something,’ he said as we waited for Meg to come to the door.

I shot him one angry look which should have warned him that nothing he could say would draw a civil response from me ever again.

‘Will you marry me, Julia?’ he asked.

I could not believe my ears. ‘What did you say?’ I demanded.

‘I asked you to marry me,’ he repeated. I could hear from inside the house someone coming down the stairs to open the front door. I was still boiling with anger towards Lady Querry, towards Mrs Williams and her beastly shop and shopgirls and the whole unjust unequal cruelty of the Quality world. But more than anything else I was in a blind rage with James Fortescue, who had promised he would speak to Mrs Williams and then left me all alone to look a fool in front of the most fashionable modiste and the biggest gossip in Bath.

Meg opened the door, dipped a curtsy and held it for me.

I turned to face James and put out my hand to him. I was still trembling with anger and my hand shook. He took it and carried it to his lips. I could feel the warmth of his kiss through the glove. I could tell by his eyes that he was smiling.

‘Don’t be cross,’ he said, oblivious of Meg, blind to the people on the street who were watching us with curiosity. ‘Don’t be cross. I love you much too much to want to make you cross for long. I wanted to see how you would handle old Williams. And I wanted you to know that you could do it. Because you will have to handle Dr Phillips, and perhaps your uncle and your cousin. But I will promise to help you with them. And on that occasion I will not leave you all on your own. Will you marry me, Julia?’

I felt the anger flow away from me as if I had no temper at all, and I forgot that Meg was watching, and the people on the street. I put my other hand up to his face and cupped it around his cheek.

‘Yes,’ I said simply. ‘Yes, I will.’

16

‘Your mama is in her bedroom,’ Meg said. ‘She asked after you and thought you had gone to the doctor’s on your own.’

‘I’ll go on up,’ I said, moving towards the stairs.

‘She’ll have heard the carriage,’ Meg said in warning. I turned back to look at her. She was smiling, certain she had caught me in some clandestine courtship.

‘Thank you, Meg,’ I said pointedly. ‘That will be all.’

I waited until she had curtsied and gone to the kitchen stairs before I went to knock on Mama’s door.

She was obviously unwell. I don’t think I ever saw her ill more than twice in all my childhood. Although she was so slight-looking, she was strong, and she seemed incapable of taking fevers or colds, having nursed Richard and me through every sort of childhood ailment.

But now she was lying in bed, very pale, with her forehead and hands very hot and dry. She was moving restlessly on her pillow, seeking a cool spot to lay her head.

‘Lie still, Mama,’ I said, going to the bell-pull. ‘I’ll order a cold drink for you, and some warm water to sponge your forehead with. And I’ll have them fetch a doctor to see you.’

‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said in relief. ‘What a long time you have been with Dr Phillips today!’

I should have told her then that I had played truant that morning, but she seemed so wan and ill that I let the omission slip into a lie. I raised her up and turned the pillows and took one of the blankets off the bed, and then I went to the door to ask Meg for the things I needed and to send the footman out to the best doctor in Bath.


He came at once and felt Mama’s forehead and looked at her eyes and asked her how she felt. Then he smiled and said very soothingly that it was nothing more than a putrid sore throat, and that she would feel very ill indeed for a week or so, and then perfectly well. He gave her some laudanum and left a small bottle for the pain and to help her sleep, and he recommended lemon tea with a dash of brandy in it.

As soon as he had gone, I scribbled a note to James to ask him to come back and see me, if it was convenient, and one to Mrs Densham to make our excuses from her card party and dinner that afternoon.

James walked back with the footman and learned from him that my mama was ill. ‘Leave it to me,’ he said comfortably. ‘I’ll go to Jimmy Dart and the rest of them and get them moved into the inn. I’ll give them some money to be going along with, and I’ll have the landlady of the inn fetch a doctor for Rosie. You stay here and look after your mama, and I’ll drop in on my way home to tell you how I have done.’

Oh, thank you, James,’ I said, and put out my hand to him. ‘I knew you would. You are kind to interest yourself in them.’

He smiled. ‘I am interested in them,’ he conceded. ‘But I think I am more interested in you, Julia Lacey. Is your mama too ill for you to speak to her about us? I should like to speak to her as soon as possible.’

‘To ask for permission to propose?’ I asked, teasing. ‘You seem to have left it a little late for that!’

He drew me to him with an arm around my waist and turned my face up to him with his cupped hand under my chin. ‘Oh, my darling, you are very, very silly,’ he said softly. ‘I asked permission of your mama a week ago! I told my parents that I should propose to you whenever your mama had heard from Wideacre and given her consent. She told me last night as I took her to her chair that as far as she and your Uncle John were concerned, you might take or leave me as you wished.’

‘Oh!’ I said blankly. ‘She never said anything to me.’

‘Well, they all have this maggot in their heads, don’t they?’ said James easily. ‘They all want to know whether you can be an ordinary young lady or not. And they all think that unless you live elsewhere, you will be plagued with dreams and seeings and hobgoblins. I think they thought you would turn me down.’

‘I should hate to leave Wideacre altogether,’ I said, suddenly afraid that James might want me to live in his home town of Bristol.

‘I don’t see why you should leave it at all,’ James said. He sat down on a sofa by the fire and drew me down to sit beside him. ‘I have a substantial inheritance, which comes to me on my marriage. Why don’t we buy your cousin out of his share of the hall and live there? I could fancy being a country squire if Acre is as you describe it now!’

‘We couldn’t!’ I said, remembering Richard’s passion for the hall, and remembering with some discomfort the old childhood promise that we would marry and live there together.

‘If your cousin cares little for the stock and for farming, then I don’t see why we should not offer him a good price for his half,’ James said reasonably. ‘Or you could sell your share of the hall to him. We could build our own house, and farm your share of the land from there.’

I looked at him suspiciously. ‘You have been planning this!’ I accused. He drew me a little closer to him until it was most easy and comfortable to rest against him, and look up and smile into his warm brown eyes.

‘Of course I have!’ he said. ‘You didn’t think that I was going to take my lovely squire Julia and shut her up in a Bristol town house, did you? Of course I want you to have Wideacre. And I shall buy it for you.’

‘And the dreams and the seeings and the hobgoblins?’ I asked softly.

‘If you are mad, my darling, then I am moving into Bedlam at once,’ he said firmly and drew my face towards his and punctuated his sentence with small gentle kisses on my cheeks, my eyelids and my nose. ‘For you [kiss] are the sweetest [kiss] and the wisest [kiss] and the bravest [kiss] and the cleverest [kiss] and the angriest [kiss, kiss] young woman I have ever had the pleasure of kissing while her mama is too ill to chaperon us!’

I leaped to my feet at that, gasped, blushed and then laughed. Oh, that is dreadful!’ I said. ‘And I am dreadful to be sitting here with you. And you, James Fortescue, are no gentleman at all!’

‘I know,’ he said mournfully. ‘Trade, my dear. Only the first generation out of the counting-house and still smelling of shop!’

‘You do indeed,’ I said firmly. ‘Now go and run my errands for me, and don’t come and see me again without one of your sisters to sit with us.’

‘I should think they would bless me for that,’ James said as I pushed him out of the room to find Meg industriously polishing the table in the hall.

‘I shall shout through the keyhole that I have the children from Acre safe,’ James said. ‘Or sing it up to your window. Anything rather than be alone with you again. Will you come to dinner tonight?’

‘No,’ I said while Meg dawdled over handing James his cape, hat and gloves. ‘I have written to your aunt. I shall stay at home with Mama.’

‘I’ll go back home to Clifton then,’ James said. ‘I want to have a word with my papa. He’ll want to know his son has joined the minor gentry.’

‘Minor!’ I said in mock outrage.

‘A very little estate,’ James said dampeningly, ‘and scarcely a dowry at all, I understand.’

I gleamed at him. ‘Not bad for a tradesman’s son,’ I said.

‘Not bad at all,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘Thank you, Meg,’ he said as he took his hat from her, and then he stepped forward and kissed me on the lips and was out of the door and down the steps before I could say a word.

‘Congratulations, Miss,’ Meg said, reverently shutting the door behind him. ‘Cook will be so surprised.’

And she was away down to the kitchen quarters before I could ask her not to tell them in the kitchen, because I had not even told my own mama yet, nor my uncle. Nor had I written to my cousin.

I should have written to Uncle John and Richard that very day, but Mama awoke from her sleep so hot and so feverish that I sat with her all the afternoon and barely had time to dash off a note to Ralph Megson telling him that I would send the Acre pauper children home to Wideacre as soon as I had confirmation from him.