‘Good,’ Mama said, businesslike. ‘He’s out in the stables now, seeing to your horse.’

Something broke in my head at that – through the haze of laudanum and the heaviness of my sin. I sat up in bed, and I spoke across Uncle John to my mama. ‘No!’ I said. ‘Mama, please! Please don’t let him touch Misty.’

She shot a bewildered look at John as if this might be some symptom of a blow on the head or high temperature.

‘Please!’ I said urgently. ‘Promise me, Mama! Don’t let him touch my horse.’

‘No, my darling,’ she said gently. ‘Not if you do not wish it. I will go down to the stables now and tell him to come away from her, and leave her to Jem if that is what you wish.’

‘It is,’ I said, and sank back on the pillows.

‘Now sleep,’ John said authoritatively. ‘Sleep until dinnertime. There will be no more pain and there is nothing to worry you, so sleep, Julia.’

I smiled towards him, but I could barely see his face; the room was wavering before my eyes. I think I was asleep before the two of them had left the room.

I slept until dinner.

Richard came upstairs and Jenny Hodgett served our meal and stood discreetly at Richard’s elbow throughout.

I ate little, for I was not hungry. And every now and then I would look at Richard and feel my eyes fill with useless, inexplicable tears. I felt that it was my fault. My fault that it had happened. My fault that I had not told at once, the minute I was home, that through my cowardice Richard and Mama, Uncle John and I would all be living a lie. I had not told when I should have told. And now I could say nothing. I could not even stop Richard smiling at me in that familiar, conspiratorial way.

When Jenny brought up a dish of tea for me, she had a message from Uncle John: if ‘I felt well enough, Mr Megson was downstairs and would speak with me. Richard left the room and Jenny helped me from my bed and into my wrapper. I knew it must be something important for Ralph to come to the house at this time of night, and I paused before my mirror to push my hair back and tie it with a ribbon. I knew that I would not be able to tell Ralph either. I wondered if he would know without being told that I had lost my honesty, that I was a liar.

Ralph and Uncle John were downstairs in the library. He smiled at me and asked after my accident, and apologized for calling me downstairs when I was unwell. I nodded. Ralph and I had always been mercifully brief with each other.

‘Clary Dench is missing,’ he said shortly. ‘I’m trying to discover when she was last seen and if she had plans to go away for the holiday.’

I took a deep breath. I could scarcely understand what he was saying. ‘I saw her on the downs, at the maying,’ I said. ‘She said she was going home, and she left early. She was planning no holiday away from Acre.’

Ralph nodded. ‘I can’t believe she’d go off without a word to anyone,’ he said, half to Uncle John, half to me.

‘D’you think some harm has befallen the girl?’ Uncle John demanded.

Ralph grimaced and glanced at me in case I could help him. ‘It’s always hard to tell with wenches,’ he said. ‘I’ll not turn out the village to hunt for her on a fool’s errand. It’s their first holiday in years and they’ve been out once today already looking for Miss Julia.’

‘Clary’s not flighty,’ I said. The words I was speaking were echoing coldly as if I were speaking down a well. I knew I had seen true on the downs in the morning. I had tried to keep Clary with me then. I had been afraid to tell her how dark a shadow I saw on her. I seemed to be afraid to tell the truth to anyone. ‘She’d have told someone if she was going off. And I don’t believe she’d have left her family without a word like that.’

Ralph nodded. The door opened and Richard came in quietly and stood at one end of the long table, at the carver chair, where the head of the household would sit.

‘What would you wish?’ Ralph asked the air midway between Uncle John and me. He did not even glance at Richard.

‘Take two or three men and look around the woods for her,’ Uncle John said, his eyes on me.

I nodded. ‘Start at the Fenny,’ I said. ‘Clary always went down to the river when she was sad. And she was very sad today.’

Ralph nodded. ‘She had quarrelled with Matthew?’

‘Yes,’ I said, taciturn.

‘I’ll have a few out to look for her,’ he said. ‘But it’s a nuisance. I had promised Acre they would have a couple of days free of work. Now I shall have to order some men out when they will want to be dancing.’

‘I’ll help,’ Richard said suddenly. We all turned and looked at him. He was very bright. ‘I’ll help. There’s little I can do to help on the land,’ he said pleasantly. ‘I’d be glad to save you some trouble, Mr Megson, and help with finding Clary.’

‘Thank ’ee,’ Ralph said slowly. He was looking at Richard very hard, no smile in his eyes. ‘That would be a help. I’ll send the men down to you tomorrow morn, as soon as it is light, unless the lass turns up home before then.’

‘I’ll be ready,’ Richard promised.

Ralph turned to me. ‘And you, Miss Julia? Will you be resting tomorrow or will you be well enough then to come down and at least watch the dancing?’

I was about to say that I would be well enough to go down to Acre tomorrow, but a pang in my belly made me gasp and my eyes filled with ineffectual tears. ‘I’m tired,’ I said weakly. ‘I’ll come down to the village when I feel better, Mr Megson.’


‘Aye,’ Ralph said generously. ‘Don’t come before you’re well. I’m surprised you fell at all, but then, good riders often fall the hardest. I’m truly sorry it was a fall from a horse I’d chosen for you!’

‘It was not her fault,’ I said. My lips had grown cold and stiff and I could hardly speak. ‘It was all my own fault, Ralph. It was all my fault. I should have known better.’

‘Now that’s enough,’ said Richard kindly. ‘I’ll fetch your mama to put you to bed.’ He turned to Ralph. ‘She’s still shocked from her fall,’ he said.

Ralph stepped backwards one pace and bowed. ‘I’m sorry to intrude,’ he said awkwardly.

I held my hand out to him. I wanted to say that he was not intruding, that he would never intrude. I wanted to beg him to look for Clary, to tell him of my foreboding for her, to make him see with the sight that something was badly wrong. But it was no good. I could not tell him that truth. I could not tell him that I had not fallen from my horse. I could do no more than look towards Ralph with one long imploring glance – and then the tears welled up in my eyes and rolled down my cheeks.

‘I am sorry,’ I said in a voice choked with weeping. ‘I am so sorry. I cannot seem to stop crying.’

‘Bedtime,’ John said with kind firmness. Richard came in with Mama and she helped me up the stairs to my bedroom and tucked me up in bed as if I were a little girl again. All the time the tears were rolling down my face and she wiped them with her own cool handkerchief which smelled of lilies, and then tucked it under my pillow and left me with one candle for a light.

I lay on my back and felt the tears roll outwards from the corner of my eyes and down my temples in drying little lanes of desolation. Then I gasped and sat up in my bed as I remembered that my petticoat and shift were stained with blood.

Wearily I got out of bed and went to the chest where I had bundled them, and I pulled them out. The blood was brown – old and inoffensive now. I folded them up and stuffed them on the embers of my bedroom fire. They smouldered and burned as I tumbled back into bed and slept, and it was doubtless the smoke from the fire that made me dream uneasy dreams about an empty house, and men coming with torches, and a fire which burned down the whole house and left nothing but ruin on the land.

Clary was dead.

I had guessed it. I had seen her in danger ever since I had looked along the lines of the raspberry-cane weeders and shuddered because she was not there.

No one knew who had done it, no one could think who would do such a thing to pretty Clary. But Richard said that they had found Matthew Merry beside the body. He was wet through and they guessed he had gone into the Fenny and pulled her out. She was in the river; she had floated down river to the weir above the new mill, but she had not drowned. They thought she had been strangled first and then thrown in the river. Clary would never drown. We had learned to swim together all those hot summers ago.

It looked bad for Matthew. He would not say how he had found her. He would not say how he had come to be beside the river before the search party was out. He would not say or do anything except cradle her distorted face in his arms and weep and stammer her name over and over.

I cried out when Uncle John told me, his face grim with the news Richard brought back to the Dower House. My mama was by my side at once with more hartshorn and water.

‘Drink this, my darling,’ she said, and I drank it, obedient as a little child, with my eyes fixed on John’s face, seeking the merciful numbness of the drug.

‘What can have happened?’ I asked, grief and sleep clogging my tongue.

‘She was strangled,’ he replied bluntly. Mama’s hand flew out to stop him, but he shook his head. ‘She has to know, Celia,’ he said. ‘She has to know what is happening in Acre. Richard is talking to the village youths and girls. No one can think what could have happened. She had been quarrelling with her betrothed. They think in Acre that she meant to jilt him.’

‘No,’ I said swiftly. ‘It could not be Matthew Merry. He has the sweetest temper, and he has loved Clary ever since they were children. He could not have hurt her.’

‘The lad who had the fainting fits?’ Mama asked. Her eyes went to John’s face. ‘He used to faint, and when he came to his senses, he had no memory of himself or what he had done,’ she said, her voice low.

Uncle John nodded.

‘He never did anything bad when he had his fits,’ I said suddenly. ‘Don’t look like that, Uncle John. He just had a weak head and sometimes he used to faint. He was the sweetest boy and he is a dear young man. He could not hurt a fly, let alone Clary! They were quarrelling, yes, but that does not mean he would hurt her. He adored her!’

Uncle John nodded. ‘He knew where to find her,’ he said quietly, ‘and they found him holding her body and weeping. It looks very black against him.’

‘No,’ I said positively. ‘It could not be. He would never hurt Clary. He would kill himself first.’ I broke off then, for I was afraid I would start weeping again. No one in the Dower House knew Clary and Matthew well but me. Mama and Uncle John might be kind, but they had not played with the Acre children under the Wideacre trees. They did not know that those two had been plighted lovers since they were little children, that Matthew would have died rather than hurt Clary and that this quarrel must have pained them both.

‘Perhaps Lord Havering can make something of it all,’ Uncle John said. ‘He is the nearest Justice of the Peace. Richard has gone to speak with him.’

I nodded. The truth of what had happened was only now starting to come clear to me. ‘And Clary is dead,’ I said slowly. ‘Would she have been in much pain?’

I saw Mama’s quick gesture to John again, but he answered me steadily and told me the truth. ‘Only for brief moments,’ he said. ‘The killer strangled her with his hands. But she would not have been in pain or fear for long, Julia. She would have lost consciousness very swiftly.’

I nodded. I could hear the words, but I could not speak, for a rising wave of nausea was threatening to choke me. I could see in my mind Clary’s bright pretty face and the tears in her eyes when she said Matthew had broken her heart and she promised she would meet me at the dancing.

‘I can’t bear it!’ I said on a half-sob. ‘On Wideacre!’

Then Uncle John took one arm, and Mama the other, and they helped me up the stairs to my bedroom. He poured me a measure of laudanum and Mama held my hand until my tight grip on her loosened and I started falling into sleep.

‘Mama!’ I suddenly called out, on the very edge of panic as I slid into sleep. ‘Mama!’

For in that second between sleeping and wakefulness I thought that I was Clary running for my life through the woods of Wideacre, and behind me was the man who was coming to kill me. Coming to kill me because I had seen something so dreadful that he had no choice but to kill me. I had seen that decision in his eyes, and I knew that if I did not rim faster than I had ever run in my life, he would catch me and throw me down to the ground and put his gentry-soft hands around my throat and tighten them until I could breathe no more. And in the dream I was Clary, running as if the devil himself were on her heels. But I was also myself. And I was as afraid as Clary.