I gazed out to sea where the waves followed each other like wandering, rolling hills and faced the principal question that awaited me at home: if the villains of the Kent attack had all been rounded up, sentenced and hanged; or whether one — just one, the leader with his two black dogs and his black horse — was still free. The question no longer woke me screaming every night, although the black horse continued to ride through my occasional nightmares. But the thought of my lovely strong Ralph swinging himself about on crutches, or worse still shuffling his body along the ground like a dog in the gutter, would always make me feel sick with fear and disgust. I took care to keep the picture from my mind, and if it came, unbidden, when I closed my eyes for sleep I took a good measure of laudanum and escaped.

If the corn rioters were all taken I could sleep in peace. He might well be dead already. He could have been executed in his disguise and no one ever thought to tell Wideacre, and certainly no one troubled enough to send the news to us in France. The figure who still haunted my darkest nightmares might be a ghost indeed, and I had no fear of dead men.

But if he were dead I felt I would mourn him. My first lover, the boy, then the man, who had spoken so longingly of the land and pleasure and the need to have them both. The clever youth who saw so young that there are those who give and those who take love. The daring, passionate, spontaneous lover who would fling himself on me and take me without doubt and without conscience. His frank sensuality had matched mine in a way that Harry never could. If he had only been of the Quality … but that was a daydream that would lead nowhere. He had killed for Wideacre; he had nearly died for it. All I had to hope was that the noose had done what the spring of the mantrap had half done, and that the love of my childhood, girlhood and womanhood was dead.

‘Is that — can that be land?’ asked Celia suddenly. She pointed ahead and I could see the faintest dark smudge like smoke on the horizon.

‘I don’t think it can be yet,’ I said, straining my eyes. ‘The captain said not till tomorrow. But we have had good winds all day.’

‘I do believe it is,’ said Celia, her pale cheeks flushed with pleasure. ‘How wonderful to see England again. I shall fetch Julia to catch her first glimpse of her home.’

And away down the hatch she went and came up with the baby, nurse and all the paraphernalia of infancy so that the baby could be pointed to the prow and face her homeland.

‘It’s to be hoped she’s more excited by the sight of her father,’ I said, watching this nonsense.

Celia laughed without a trace of disappointment. ‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘I expect she’s far too young to pay much heed. But I like to talk to her and show her things. She will learn soon enough.’

‘It won’t be for lack of teaching if she does not,’ I said drily.

Celia glanced at me and registered the tone of my voice.

‘You don’t … you don’t regret it, Beatrice?’ She stepped towards me, the baby against her shoulder. Her face showed concern for me and my feelings, but I noticed she had tightened her grip on the baby’s shawl.

‘No.’ I smiled at her suddenly scared face. ‘No, no, Celia. The baby is yours with my blessing. I only spoke thus because I am surprised to see how much she means to you.’

‘How much?’ Celia stared at me, uncomprehending. ‘But, Beatrice, she is so utterly perfect. I would have to be mad not to love her more than my life itself.’

‘That’s settled then,’ I said, glad to let the matter drop. It seemed odd to me that Celia’s instinctive, passionate love for the child, which had started at the news of my pregnancy, had flowered into such devotion. My enthusiasm for the boy I dreamed I carried blinded me to the prettiness of the girl who was born. But then Celia had wanted a child to love, any child. I wanted only an heir.

I got up and strolled across the gently rocking deck to gaze across the sea to England, which was becoming a darker smudge every moment. I leaned against the ship’s rail and felt, half consciously, the sun-warmed wood pressing against my breasts. Tonight, or at the latest tomorrow night, I should be in the arms of the Squire of Wideacre once more. I shivered with anticipation. It had been a long, long wait but my homecoming to Harry would make up for it.

The wind veered to an offshore breeze, the sails flapped and the sailors cursed as we neared land. The captain at dinner promised we would dock at Portsmouth in the morning. I dipped my head over my plate to hide the disappointment in my face but Celia smiled and said she was glad.

‘For Julia is most likely to be awake then,’ she explained. ‘And she is always at her best in the mornings.’

I nodded, my eyelashes hiding the contempt in my eyes. Celia might think of nothing but the infant, but I would be surprised if Harry so much as glanced in the expensive cradle when I was standing by it.


I was surprised.

I was bitterly surprised.

We came to Portsmouth harbour shortly after breakfast, and Celia and I were standing at the ship’s rails anxiously scanning the crowd.

‘There he is!’ called Celia. ‘I can see him, Beatrice! And there is your mama, too!’

My eyes hit Harry’s gaze with a shock like a horse shying. I held to the rail, my nails digging into the hard wood to stop myself from crying, ‘Harry! Harry!’ and stretching my arms out to him to bridge the narrowing gap between ship and shore. I gasped with the physical pain of demanding, hard sexual desire. I glanced beyond him to Mama leaning forward to look out of the carriage window and raised a hand to her, then found my eyes dragged back to my brother, my lover.

He was the first up the gangplank as soon as the ship was moored and I was first to greet him — no thought of precedence in my head. Celia was bent over the cradle collecting her baby anyway, so there was no reason why I should hang back, and no reason why Harry should not take me into his arms.

‘Harry,’ I said, and I could not keep the lust from my voice. I held out my hands to him and raised my face for a kiss. My eyes ranged over his face as if I wanted to devour him. He dropped a brief affectionate kiss off-centre on my mouth and looked over my shoulder.

‘Beatrice,’ he said. And then looked back to my face. ‘Thank you, indeed I do thank you for bringing them home, for bringing both of them home.’

Then he gently, oh so gently, set me aside with an unconscious push and walked past me — the woman he adored — to Celia. To Celia and my child he went, and put his arms around both of them.

‘Oh, my dearest,’ I heard him say softly, for her ears alone. Then he plunged his face under her bonnet and kissed her, oblivious of the smiling sailors, of the crowd on the harbour wall, oblivious, too, of my eyes boring into his back.

One long kiss and bis eyes were bright with love, fixed on her face and his whole face was warm with tenderness. He turned to the baby in her arms.

‘And this is our little girl,’ he said. His voice was full of surprise and delight. He took her gently from Celia and held the little body so the wobbly head was level with his face.

‘Good morning, Miss Julia,’ he said in a tender play. ‘And welcome home to your own country.’ He broke off and said aside to Celia, ‘Why, she is the image of Papa! A true Lacey! Don’t you think so? A very true-bred heir, my darling!’ And he smiled at her and, tucking the baby securely in the crook of his elbow, freed one hand so he could take her little hand and kiss it.

Jealousy, amazement and horror had first of all nailed me silent to the rail, but I found my tongue at last to break up this affecting scene.

‘We must get the bags,’ I said abruptly.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Harry, not shifting his gaze from Celia’s deliriously crimsoning face.

‘Will you fetch the porters?’ I said, as politely as I could.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Harry, not moving an inch.

‘Celia will want to greet Mama and show her the baby,’ I said skilfully and watched Celia’s immediate guilty jump and scurry to the gangplank with the child.

‘Not like that,’ I said impatiently, and called the nurse to carry the baby, straightened Celia’s bonnet and shawl, handed her her reticule and went with them, in a dignified procession, ashore.

Mama was as bad as Harry. She hardly saw Celia or me. Her arms were out for the baby and her eyes were fixed on its perfect little face, framed in the circle of pleats of the bonnet.

‘What an exquisite child,’ Mama said, her breath a coo of pleasure. ‘Hello, Miss Julia. Hello. Welcome to your home, at last.’

Celia and I exchanged knowing glances. Celia might be baby-struck but she had walked all night with the child almost every night since the birth. We maintained a respectful silence while Mama cooed and the baby gurgled in reply, while Mama inspected the tiny perfect fingers and held the satin-slippered feet with love. She raised her head at last and acknowledged us both with a warm smile.

‘Oh, my dears, I can hardly tell you what pleasure it gives me to see you both!’ As she said the words her eyes cleared of her passion for the baby and I saw some shadow pass over their pale blueness. She looked quickly, sharply, even suspiciously from Celia’s open flower-like face to my lovely lying one.

I felt suddenly, superstitiously afraid. Afraid of her knowledge, of her awareness. She knew the smell of birth, and I still bled in secret, a strange, sweet-smelling flow that I feared she could sense. She could not know; yet as she looked so hard at me I felt hahf naked, as if she was noting the new plumpness of my neck, of my breasts, of my arms. As if she could see beneath my gown the tight swaddling around my breasts. As if she could smell, despite my constant meticulous bathing, the sweet smell of leaking milk. She looked into my eyes … and she knew. In a brief exchange of silent looks she knew. She saw, I swear she saw, a woman who had shared a woman’s pains and pleasure, who had, like her, given birth to a child; who knew, like her, the pain and the work and the triumph of pushing out, into the uninterested world, a magical new life that you have made. Then she looked hard at Celia and saw a girl, a virginal pretty girl, quite unchanged from the shy bride. Virtually untouched.

She knew, I could sense it. But her mind recoiled. She could not put the knowledge into her conventional frightened mind that her instincts were telling her as clear as a ringing bell. Her eyes saw my plumpness and Celia’s strained thinness. Her senses smelted the milk on me; her own motherhood recognized that mark on me: a woman who has given birth, who has taken her part in the creation of life, and her eyes slid from me to Celia.

‘How tired you must be, my dear,’ she said. ‘Such a long journey after such an experience. Sit down and we will soon be home.’ Celia had a kiss and a seat beside Mama in the carriage, and then Mama turned to me.

‘My dearest,’ she said, and the fear and unspeakable suspicion in her eyes had gone. She was too weak, she was too much of a coward to face anything unpleasant; the secret horror of her life would always escape her. ‘Welcome home, Beatrice,’ she said, and she leaned forward and kissed me, and held my plump fertile body in her arms. ‘It is good to see you again, and looking so well.’

Then Harry joined us and he and I loaded the failing wet-nurse into Mama’s carriage, and watched the luggage and the servants into the second chaise.

‘How well you have managed,’ said Harry gratefully. ‘If I had known when I left you … But I never should have gone at all if I had not known that you would manage, my dearest Beatrice, whatever happened.’

He took my hand and kissed it, but it was the cool kiss of a grateful brother and not the warm caress he had given to Celia. I scanned his face, searching for a clue to his change towards me.

‘You know I would always do anything to please you, Harry,’ I said ambiguously, the heat still in my body.

‘Oh, yes,’ he said equably. ‘But any man would feel the care of his child, his very own child, to be something special, so precious, Beatrice.’

I smiled then. I could see into his heart. Harry, like Celia, was baby-struck. It would be a tedious period while it lasted but they would grow out of it. I very much doubted if Harry’s infatuation would last the length of the journey home, cooped up in a carriage with a squalling, underfed, travelsick baby, an inexperienced mother and a foreign nurse.