you from that brute. But God forgive me, Beatrice, I have kept seeing you in my mind as I saw you then, naked on the floor. Oh, that I should have saved you from him to ruin you myself!’ He dropped his head into his hands again in despair. ‘Beatrice, before heaven I never meant to,’ he said muffled. ‘I am a villain, but God knows not such a villain as to plan this thing. I did not dream such a thing could happen between brother and sister. I am totally to blame and I do not shirk my guilt. But, Beatrice, I did not know such a thing was possible.’
I put my hand tenderly on his silly head.
‘You are not totally to blame,’ I said gently. ‘And there is no blame. You have been dreaming of me, and I have been dreaming of you. There is no need for guilt.’
Harry raised his tear-filled eyes to my face with a glimmer of hope.
‘It is a sin though,’ he said uncertainly.
I shrugged, and at the movement my dress parted and one silky shoulder and the curve of my breast caught Harry’s gaze.
‘I cannot feel it is a sin,’ I said. ‘I know when I am doing wrong and this does not seem to me wrong. It seems to me where I should be, where I have been going towards all my life. I cannot see this as something wrong.’
‘It is wrong though,’ said Harry. He could not take his eyes from the gap in my gown. ‘It is wrong,’ he repeated. ‘And one cannot say something is not a sin just because it feels right …’
His voice, the voice of the authoritative know-all male tailed off as I lay back and shut my eyes. Harry leaned beside me, supported on one elbow. ‘You are not thinking logically, Beatrice …’ he said, and he said no more. He leaned forward and kissed my eyelids as gently as a downland butterfly alighting on a flower.
I made not a move; I barely sighed. I lay as still as a leaf as he traced a line of gentle kisses down my cheek, down my throat, and down the smooth flatness between my breasts. He pushed at the gown with his forehead and rubbed his face, as gentle now as he had been rough before, along the swell of my breasts and then took the crowning nipple in his mouth.
‘It is a sin,’ he said muffled.
His eyes were shut so he could not see me smile.
I lay still with the sun on my eyelids and felt Harry’s weight shift over to come on me again, and felt his insistent hardness. He might have all the resources of education in rhetoric but I had the high singing magic of Wideacre, and the easy pull of two young bodies. We moved together and there was a spark of pleasure like lightning before a storm as we touched, but came no closer. We rubbed like courting otters; face to face, body to body, legs entwined, biding our time.
‘It is a sin and I will not do it,’ said Harry. His denial was exciting to both of us.
‘I will not,’ he said again as he did. We rocked together and he slid inside me like an otter entering deep water.
‘Beatrice, my darling,’ he said. I opened my eyes and smiled at him.
‘Harry, my love,’ I said. ‘My only love.’
He groaned and fell on my mouth, and his tongue and his body stirred me at once. This time we were slower, more sensuous. I slithered down on him and twisted to give him as much awareness of me as I could. Harry’s ignorant bumpings on me had me shuddering with delight. Then we moved faster and faster till a great explosion of feeling when Harry reared up and banged my head and shoulders on the soft turf of the downs in ecstasy and triumph.
Then we were still for a long, long time.
We rolled apart and dressed. I was quiet in my mind and sore in my body. From a saddlebag I unpacked ham, floury bread still warm from the baking, beer for Harry in a stone jug with a glass stopper, and a broad withy basket of Wideacre strawberries. We sat side by side looking out over our lands and wolfed the food. I was as hungry as if I had been fasting for a week. Harry fetched me a glass of water from the spring further down the hill at the start of the beech coppice and I drank in silence. It wells out of the chalk here as pure as filtered rain. It was icy cold and tasted green and sweet.
After the last strawberry we still had said nothing. I rolled on my back and gazed up at the sky and after a little hesitation Harry lay down beside me, then raised himself to look at my face. He rested his head on one hand and touched my face gently, nervously, with the other hand. As I smiled he took one tress of my loosened chestnut hair and wound it around his finger.
‘It pleased you,’ he said. It was not a question. He had seen and felt my delight, and it was with relief that I saw there was no need to lie.
‘Yes,’ I said, rolling to lie on my side as we faced each other mirror fashion.
‘Does it seem wrong to you?’ Harry’s moral certainties had been overthrown by his body, but always he would need words. Even now, sticky with pleasure and worn out from lovemaking, he needed to talk, to put into words the speechless magic that was in the air and the earth all around us.
‘We are the Laceys of Wideacre,’ I said simply. That statement of family pride still seemed to me the only explanation I would ever need for my behaviour, even though the man who had said it was dead and his son, my brother, had lain in my arms.
‘We are the Laceys of Wideacre,’ I said again. Harry was blank. He needed words and complicated explanations. Nothing simple would ever do for him. ‘Who else could there be for me?’ I asked. ‘Who else could there be for you? On our own land, where we rule. Who else could there ever be?’
Harry smiled. ‘You are as proud as a peacock, Beatrice,’ he said. ‘It’s only a little estate, you know. There are bigger places and older names.’
I stared as blankly at him as he sometimes did at me. I scrutinized his face to see if he was joking, but to my amazement he really meant it. He really could compare Wideacre to other estates as if anywhere else would ever do for a Lacey, as if anywhere else could exist for a Lacey.
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘But they mean nothing. Here on this land there is only one master and mistress and they are always Laceys of Wideacre.’
Harry nodded. ‘Aye, it sounds well,’ he said. ‘And what takes place between you and me is a private matter which no one need ever know. As you say, on our land it is our affair. But we will need to be careful at home.’
My eyes widened. I had meant to explain to Harry that it was inevitable that we should be lovers, as surely as one season follows another. I was myself the heart of Wideacre and he had been the demigod of the harvest. The moment I had opened the barn doors to him I had opened my heart to him. The moment the earth grew for him, he was mine. I took him as easily and as naturally as the chalk soaks up rain. But Harry understood none of this. What he had heard, and what he was now thinking, was that on our own land we could meet and make love in secrecy. He was right. And to be able to love in secret and security would require some planning. But the picture in my mind of the chalk-blue butterfly coming to the flower was not the one Harry had, of hiding from the neighbours and deceiving the servants. I had thought no further than my insistent need for Harry, of the magic that had brought us to this little cup of land as naturally as one kingfisher finds another, though there be only two on the whole length of the river. But Harry had his man’s mind on loving me and he wanted to establish ways and means.
‘How could we meet in the house in private?’ he asked. ‘My bedroom is beside Mama’s and she is always listening for me. And yours is on
