Dear Miss Lacey,

I apologize for addressing you without your mother’s permission, but I write to you concerning her health. She is not well, and I believe the responsibility for running the estate is causing her some worry.

She is in no danger; but I would advise you not to extend your trip beyond the promised limits.

I have attended her in a recent slight illness and my diagnosis is that she has a weak heart which should cause no major impairment of her health, provided that she can avoid anxiety.

I trust that you, Lady Lacey and Sir Harry are in good health and enjoying your trip.

Your obedient servant,


John MacAndrew.

My first instinct was one of intense irritation that John MacAndrew should be meddling in my affairs. Just when I needed to prolong my stay in France he was ordering me home like a child from school. I would not go, of course. But to escape this responsibility might cost me some trouble.

My second reaction was better. This problem with Mama’s health could be the very thing to solve the pressing problem of keeping myself and Celia in France while Harry sped home. He could hold Mama’s hand during her palpitations, or whatever ailment she was affecting to get her darling boy home. I put this suggestion — suitably embroidered — to Celia, and she fell on the idea.

‘Oh, yes!’ she said. We were in her room as she dressed to go out for our drive, and her eyes met mine in her long mirror. ‘But you will be so anxious about your mama, Beatrice.’

‘Yes,’ I said sorrowfully. ‘But until we have a solution, Celia, I could not go home. And at least I will have the comfort of knowing that Harry is at hand to care for her. Harry will be able to take the anxiety of running Wideacre off her shoulders.’

‘Let us tell him at once,’ said Celia decisively. So we tied our bonnets and adjusted our parasols and drove out to find him.

Harry was visiting a farm where they used seaweed for manure, as we planned to do at Wideacre. I believed that on chalk soil like our upland pastures you should use animal manure, and the seaweed is of use only in the sand and clay of the valley bottoms. But Harry believed it could be used on the slopes of chalk if it was properly rotted. He was visiting a farm where they dried and turned the seaweed in the sun and rain before ploughing it in, and we drove towards the farm expecting to see him riding home.

Celia’s face lit up as we saw a horseman coming towards us. Under the influence of the French fashions in this little provincial town, Harry had taken to leaving off his wig and growing his hair. Under the tricorn, his golden curls glinted in the sunlight, and he rode his livery nag as if it were an Arab racer.

‘Hallo!’ he said, reining in alongside the carriage. ‘This is a pleasant surprise.’ His smile was impartially for both of us, but his eyes rested on me.

‘We brought a picnic out for lunch,’ said Celia. ‘Have you seen a nice place?’

‘Why, let us go back to the farm. They have a splendid river there. If only I had brought my rods with me, I could have tried for one of their trout.’

‘I brought them!’ said Celia triumphantly. ‘I simply knew that if I brought a picnic you would have a trout stream at hand, and the first thing you would want would be your rods.’

Harry bent over her hand resting on the side of the carriage and kissed it.

‘You are the best wife in all the world,’ he told her lovingly. ‘Excellent!’

He wheeled and called, ‘Follow me!’ to the driver and led us to the riverbank.

I did not mention Dr MacAndrew’s letter until we had eaten and Harry had been sitting with his expensive rods and empty nets for a good half an hour. I showed him the letter and then Mama’s lengthier, twice-crossed paper, which was full of anxieties about the winter sowing and confusion about which fields were to be sowed and which rested.

‘We should return at once, I think,’ said Harry when he had read Dr MacAndrew’s brief note, and spent rather longer puzzling out Mama’s spidery scrawl. ‘Mama has always been susceptible to these attacks, I know, and I should hate her to be worried into illness.’

‘I agree. We should get home as quickly as we can,’ I said. ‘Dr MacAndrew writes calmly so as not to alarm us, but he would not write at all if the situation were not serious. Which is the quickest way home?’

‘We are lucky being in Bordeaux,’ said Harry, thoughtfully. ‘If this letter had caught us in Italy, or the middle of France, we would have taken weeks. As it is, we can get a packet ship home to Bristol and post-chaise from there.’

I smiled. Everything was well for me and I left the plan at that. When Celia glanced in surprise at me, I frowned at her, and she obediently said nothing.

Indeed, it was not until several hours later that I raised the problem of my seasickness and told Harry I feared I could not face a long sea trip.

‘You will think me a very unloving daughter, I am sure,’ I said smiling bravely. ‘But, Harry, I dare not set foot on board for a long voyage, especially in November. I can barely face crossing the Channel again.’

We were in our private drawing room after dinner and Harry paused in his letter-writing, with the sailing times before him.

‘Well, what is to be done, Beatrice?’ he asked. He turned to me for a solution to problems just as he turned to Celia for little treats and comforts.

‘Mama needs you,’ I said bravely. ‘So I think you should go. Celia and I can stay here until we hear how things are at home. If Mama is still ill once you have freed her from the cares of Wideacre, then I shall simply have to find the courage to sail home. But if you are happy about her condition, and confident there is no danger, then we can travel post to the Channel and sail to Portsmouth.’

‘Yes, or I could come and fetch you,’ said Harry comfortingly. ‘Or we could arrange for a courier to escort you. Of course you cannot travel alone. Does it seem the best plan to you, Beatrice?’

I smiled and nodded, trying to keep the satisfaction out of my face. Not only had Harry fallen in with my ideas to the letter, but noticeably he had not even glanced in Celia’s direction for her opinion. She was to go home or stay in France as I pleased.

‘What about the servants?’ said Harry. ‘I shall take my valet home, of course, but that leaves you with the maids and the two travelling coaches.’

‘Oh, spare me!’ I said in laughing consternation. ‘We shall be following you in a few days! Celia and I are not so nice that we cannot manage with a French maid for a few days. Harry, pray do not leave me with a couple of servants and two carriages to transport home!’

Harry grinned. ‘No, of course not,’ he said. ‘I can arrange for the carriages and all the heavy trunks to come with me, and if you wish it your maids can come with me too.’

‘Yes please,’ I said and turned to Celia. ‘You do not mind being without a maid for that little while, do you, Celia?’

She kept her head down to her work, a poor liar and she knew it.

‘Of course not,’ she said, her voice steady.

‘Very well then,’ said Harry. ‘It is decided. I shall see the landlord.’ He paused at the door. ‘I hope this is agreeable to you, Celia?’ he asked politely.

‘Of course,’ she said generously. ‘Whatever you and Beatrice wish.’

Harry went out and Celia held her tongue until the door had firmly shut behind him. Then she regarded me with awe.

‘Beatrice, you did almost nothing, and yet everything came out as you wanted it,’ she said.

I smiled and tried to keep the smugness from my voice.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It always does.’

* * *

Harry sailed, but our last night together was one of lingering sweetness. He was ready to be sentimental at our parting. We had not spent one night apart since we landed in France, and we had slept every night under the same roof since we had become lovers. Now he was off to take responsibility for the running of a great estate, a full-grown man and a husband. I felt a glow of pride in him as I lay beside him, and smiled on him.

‘My God, Beatrice. You grow lovelier every day,’ he said, with pride of ownership in his voice. He leaned over me and buried his face in the warm valley between my newly plump breasts. ‘I adore you, this bit fatter,’ he said, his voice muffled as he kissed up one smooth slope and took a nipple in his mouth. I rumpled his hair and pushed his head down. Further down over the rounding curve of my newly hard belly so his tongue could trail a hot wet path lower, and lower and lower.

This was just playing at love — teasing each other’s satisfied bodies after a long night of lovemaking. I sighed with pleasure, not only at the delightful little darts of sensation trailing hotly under my skin, but also at the knowledge that we had all this early morning alone, secure from interruption.

‘When I come home,’ I said idly, ‘let’s make sure that we spend afternoons and nights together like this. I shan’t want to hide out on the downs or creep round the house like we did before.’

‘No,’ said Harry absently, rearing up to lay his head beside me on the pillow again. ‘I have ordered them to open up the adjoining door from my dressing room into the west wing so I can be in your side of the house without anyone knowing it — and without having to cross the hall. I will be able to come while the others are asleep.’

‘And at tea time,’ I said smiling.

‘And’ breakfast,’ he said.

He rolled over and checked his watch lying on the bedside table.

‘I must get dressed,’ he said. ‘Celia will soon be back from buying provisions for the voyage and I have to make sure she packs all my papers.’

I nodded but did not move.

‘Write to me as soon as you get home,’ I said. ‘I shall want to hear about Wideacre. Remember to tell me which cows are in calf and how the winter wheat is looking, and if the hay will last.’

‘And about Mama,’ said Harry.

‘Oh, yes, and about Mama,’ I concurred.

‘And you take care of yourself,’ said Harry tenderly, reaching for a clean shirt. ‘I wish you would come home with me now, Beatrice. I do hate the thought of leaving you all alone here.’

‘Nonsense,’ I said gently, and slid out of bed. ‘Celia and I will be perfectly all right. We will enjoy a leisurely journey home and we can travel with Lady Davey and her daughters as soon as they arrive in town. Then you can come and meet us at Portsmouth, or even if you wish come over to France.’

‘I may well do so,’ said Harry, brightening. ‘But only if I get my sea legs this time. I do dread the voyage, I must admit. You are well out of it, you little coward.’

‘Chicken-hearted,’ I agreed, smiling. I turned my back to him and swept up my long hair so he could fasten the little buttons I could not manage at the nape of my neck. His fingers fiddled with the little fastenings, and when he had done he bent his head to kiss me on the hairline, and tenderly grazed the strong muscles of my neck with his teeth. I leaned against him, enjoying the shivers that ran down my spine at the touch of his mouth. On the tip of my tongue was the confession that we were expecting a child. I thought for a moment that if only we were as we seemed to be — a mutually adoring married couple — how blissfully happy Harry would be at the news.

But my caution and my keen cool brain held me back from a confession grown out of the sweetness of love in the early morning. Harry’s loyalties were already divided. I could not risk him protecting Celia from the injury that was coming to her. She might be too naive and silly to realize that in accepting my son as her own she would displace her own children for ever — but Harry was not. He would never consent to have my bastard son (even though fathered by himself) as his heir, when his wife could have other legitimate boys of her own.

My mood of relaxed love and trusting confidence passed. I would never trust anyone with all my secrets, not even my darling Harry. We had grown close and relaxed on this long easy journey, but there was a cutting edge in me, a sharpness of wit that Harry lacked. Harry was my lover, my desire, but he did not make me shudder as Ralph could, with one sideways glance. And I could not imagine Harry wading through sin and crime to come with bloody hands to me. With Harry I was the master; with Ralph we were sensual, passionate equals; equally sharp, equally wise. Good hard lust I had for Ralph; Harry gave me worship and kisses and cuddles like some lovesick youth.