our child and that none of this nightmare – my absence, the birth, our mama-in-law’s death – will have happened. Then I take a drink because I cannot believe what is happening to me. And when I am drinking I know that it is all unreal, and that my real life is as happy as it was only a few months ago.’
Celia, the odious flirt, put out her hand to him. ‘You will try to stop drinking,’ she said persuasively. ‘Dear, dear, brother John, you will try?’
And my broken drunk of a husband took her hand and kissed it. ‘I will try,’ he promised. And then he stooped over Julia and set her on her feet, and toddled her round to the stable yard.
And I knew, then, that I had him.
He was in my hand, like a hand-reared foal, because he was half in love with Celia and her child and the whole sentimental nonsense of Celia’s life. Repelled by me, appalled by me, he was clinging on to Celia as a devout kisses the hem of a statue of the Virgin. Celia’s love of her child, her clear-eyed honesty, her decent warmth, all held John to life when he feared he was going mad, when he longed for death. When he despaired of a world dominated by me, he could always see Celia’s clear, lovely gaze and warm himself at the bright clear flame of her purity.
And that gave me a key to manage him. While he stayed on Wideacre through love of Celia, he could not harm me. While he kept his mouth shut to spare her, his discretion benefited me. While he gently, tenderly kissed her hand, he would not harass me. He loved and so he was vulnerable. And I was a little bit safer for that.
I was a little bit more dangerous for that as well. I am not a cold woman and I am not one who easily shares anything she loves, or even has loved once in the past. I never forgot that Celia had once threatened to take Harry from me. That when he could have been my lover he spent time and trouble to bring her willingly to his bed. That in order to keep the two of them permanently estranged I had to don all kinds of disguises and dance to all sorts of tunes to make myself Harry’s addiction. If he had not been fatally flawed, early corrupted by the brutality of that school, I should never have been able to keep him from Celia. I knew I was a hundred times more beautiful than she, a hundred times stronger. But I could not always remember that, when I saw the quiet strength she drew on when she believed she was morally right. And I could not be certain that every man would prefer me, when I remembered how Harry had looked at her with such love when we came back from France.
I would never forgive Celia for that summer. Even though it was the summer when I cared nothing for Harry but rode and danced day and night with John, I would not forget that Celia had taken my lover from me without even making an effort at conquest.
And now my husband bent to kiss her hand as if she were a queen in a romance and he some plighted knight. I might give a little puff of irritation at this scene played out before my very window. Or I might measure the weakness in John and think how I could use it. But use it I would. Even if I had felt nothing else for John I should have punished him for turning his eyes to Celia. Whether I wanted him or not was irrelevant. I did not want my husband loving anyone else.
For dinner that afternoon I dressed with extra care. I had remodelled the black velvet gown that I had worn for the winter after Papa’s death. The Chichester modiste knew her job and the deep plush folds fitted around my breasts and waist like a tight sheath, flaring out in lovely rumpled folds over the panniers at my hips. The underskirt was of black silk and whispered against the thick velvet as I walked. I made sure Lucy powdered my hair well, and set in it some black ribbon. Finally, I took off my pearl necklace and tied a black ribbon around my throat. With the coming of winter, my golden skin colour was fading to cream, and against the black of the gown I looked pale and lovely. But my eyes glowed green, dark-lashed and heavy-lidded, and I nipped my lips to make them red as I opened the parlour door.
Harry and John were standing by the fireplace. John was as far away from Harry as he could be and still feel the fire. Harry was warming his plump buttocks with his jacket caught up, and drinking sherry. John, I saw in my first sharp glance, was sipping at lemonade. I had been right. Celia was trying to save my husband. And he was hoping to get his unsteady feet back on the road to health. Harry gaped openly when he saw me, and John put a hand on the mantelpiece as if one smile from me might destroy him.
‘My word, Beatrice, you’re looking very lovely tonight,’ said Harry, coming forward and setting me a chair before the two of them.
‘Thank you, Harry,’ I said, as sickly sweet as John’s lemonade. ‘Good evening, John.’ The look I gave him was warm and sensual. I saw his knuckles whiten on the mantelpiece.
The parlour door opened and Celia came in. The blacks of mourning that set off my skin and eyes and hair merely drowned Celia’s pale gold prettiness. She never looked her best in dark colours and I foresaw two years when I would shine her down without the least effort. Tonight, while I glowed with health and loveliness and the black velvet was like a jeweller’s cloth to show off a warm cameo, Celia seemed aged and worn in her black gown.
Her brown eyes went to John’s glass and her cheeks coloured, making her suddenly a pretty girl again.
‘Oh! Well done!’ she said encouragingly. And when Harry offered her a glass of sherry she chose to take lemonade in some feeble gesture of support. I smiled, my eyes more green and veiled than ever, and accepted the large sherry Harry poured for me, and drank it before John with obvious relish.
Stride called us in to dinner and nodded to me that he wished to speak with me. I let Harry lead me into the dining room and to my chair, then I smiled my excuses and went back out into the hall where Stride hovered.
‘Miss Beatrice, I thought I should confirm with you,’ he said in an undertone. ‘Lady Lacey has ordered that there shall be no wine served this evening, nor any port for the gentlemen after dinner. She has ordered lemonade for the table, and water jugs.’
I gave an irrepressible chuckle.
‘Don’t be foolish, Stride,’ I said. ‘Are there wine glasses on the table?’
He nodded. ‘The table was laid when she gave me this order and so I did nothing until I had confirmed it with you,’ he said.
‘Of course,’ I said smoothly. ‘You did rightly. We will certainly drink wine this evening and Sir Harry will, of course, wish to have his port. You must pour wine for my husband, and if he wishes to continue drinking lemonade he can do so.’
Stride nodded, and I returned to the dining room with a smile on my lips.
‘Everything all right?’ Harry asked. I nodded, and leaned towards Celia.
‘I will explain about the wine later,’ I said to her quietly.
She looked surprised at me, and then she glanced instinctively at John. His mouth was white where his lips were pressed together. He had himself in check but one could see the strain. Then Stride came back to the room and the two footmen served the meal while he poured the wine in every glass, as I had ordered.
Celia’s gaze came up to me again in an unspoken challenge, but I was looking at Harry and asking him about the newly appointed Master of the Hunt.
‘We’ll still keep the dogs here, of course,’ Harry confirmed. ‘And Mr Haller can come over and see them often. I would rather, in any case, see a good deal of him during this year of mourning because although he knows the runs he does not know the Wideacre woods as we do, Beatrice. And I want to make sure the foxes are kept down this year.’
‘Good,’ I said. Mr Haller was leasing the Dower House, a handsome square-built
