rush at the cart. He looked around at the bright curious faces and he took a deep breath, then he took my arm in a protective gesture and nodded dismissively at Ralph’s back, and at the crowd around the cart. We swept through them like a play-acting king and queen in a travelling theatre; and they parted to let us through. Richard looked straight before him, blinded by his rage, but I glanced to left and to right with a half-smile of apology.
I saw Clary Dench openly grin at me, and I realized how ridiculous we seemed. If I had been less wary of Richard and his anger, I should have laughed out loud. We proceeded like dukes in ermine until the bend in the road hid us and Richard dropped my hand at once.
I expected him to rage, but he was quiet. ‘Richard, I am sure he meant no harm …’ I started.
Richard’s look at me was icy. ‘He threw me in the road!’ he said softly. ‘I’ll never forget that.’
‘He just bumped you by accident,’ I said. ‘And he got down at once to help you up.’
Richard looked at me blackly, and he turned for home at a fast pace. I followed in his wake at a trot.
‘He did say sorry,’ I offered. Richard hardly heard me.
‘He insulted me,’ I heard him say in an undertone. ‘He’ll be sorry.’
‘He is Uncle John’s new manager,’ I said warningly. ‘Uncle John needs him to run Wideacre. If he is the right man for the job, then we all need him to run Wideacre for us. We saw today that he can make Acre work as one, and he might be the only man who can save Wideacre.’
‘I don’t care,’ said Richard. ‘This is more important than any manager for the estate. He insulted me before all of Acre. He should be punished.’
I pulled up short at that. ‘Nothing is more important than Wideacre,’ I said. ‘There is nothing more important than getting Acre working.’
Richard paused in his long strides to stand still and look at me. The mist swirled around us so that we were as ghostly as the trees leaning over our heads. I shivered from the cold and the damp. Richard’s eyes had a radiance about them.
‘He insulted me,’ Richard said. ‘He insulted me before all Acre. I won’t stand for that. He must apologize to me for that. He has challenged me, and I must win.’
‘Richard,’ I said uneasily, ‘it was not as bad as that! It was not as serious as that!’
‘It is a matter of honour. You would not understand that, for you are a girl. But my papa and I know that it is vital that the gentry retain their control over the mob. I shall tell him at once.’
While I hesitated, thinking about whether Acre was a ‘mob’, thinking about whether Mr Megson was part of a ‘mob’, Richard turned for the lights of home, banged open the front gate and bounded up the four steps to the garden path. The door was open and he pushed it and was gone. I followed more slowly. I had done all I could to prevent him telling Uncle John, and had earned a scolding for my pains. I gritted my teeth on a spurt of temper. I trusted my judgement with the people of Acre. I trusted my judgement with Mr Megson. I did not think Richard had been insulted. I thought he was behaving like a fool. I thought he had acted like a fool. And I did not see that his precious honour was concerned in the least.
But then I checked myself. My grandmama had warned me, my mama had shown me: the duty of a proper woman is to keep her own counsel. And there are many things which men understand and women do not. If Richard thought his honour was involved, it was not my part to challenge him and argue with him. I paused for a few moments in the chill mist and breathed the damp air deeply until my own temper was still again. If I wanted to be a proper lady of Quality – and I did – then I would have to curb my independent judgement. If I wanted to be a true wife to Richard – and I wanted that more than anything in the world – then I would have to learn to support his thoughts and actions whatever my private opinions.
While I stood hesitating at the garden gate, I realized my hand was cold. I had dropped my left glove in Acre. My hand had been tucked under Richard’s arm and warmed by his grip and I had not noticed when I had lost it. They were my only pair of gloves – tan leather – once belonging to one of Mama’s stepsisters and scarcely worn. Lady Havering had found them and given them to me, and I dared not lose one. I turned on my heel and started the weary walk back to Acre.
I had trudged less than a few yards when I heard a call behind me and my heart leaped, for I thought it might be Richard. But instead, there was Uncle John. He had thrown a riding coat over his shoulders and the great capes swung as he strode down the drive after me. I stopped to wait for him.
‘I have to go back to Acre. I dropped my glove,’ I explained.
‘I’m going to Acre too,’ he said. ‘Richard tells me he had some words with Mr Megson.’
I nodded. ‘Yes,’ I said shortly.
‘Were you there?’ Uncle John asked, surprised. ‘It sounded like some sort of brawl. What were you doing amid it all, Julia?’
‘It was nothing,’ I said. Uncle John seemed to have quite misunderstood Richard. Richard could not have said that there was a brawl, when all there had been was a few sharp words from him and an accident which hurt no one. ‘Richard asked Mr Megson a question, and Mr Megson didn’t answer. Richard jumped up on the cart and then Mr Megson bumped into him with a sack of meal. Richard fell off the cart and Mr Megson helped him up. That was all.’
John paused and looked at me. ‘Is this right, Julia?’ he asked. ‘Was that really all there was to it?’
‘Yes,’ I said. I was holding to my decision to keep my private thoughts to myself. ‘Mr Megson was a bit disrespectful, and Richard was upset. But it was nothing serious.’
John was visibly relieved. ‘Well, thank the Lord for that,’ he said. ‘Young Richard made me think that I had hired a prizefighting Jacobin. Ralph Megson is the very man for me, but I should have no place for him on the estate if he could not be civil.’
‘He is not uncivil,’ I said, thinking of his gentle voice to Margaret Carter. ‘He and Richard misunderstood each other. That was all.’
John nodded. ‘Well, now I’ve come this far I’ll walk on with you,’ he said agreeably. ‘I gave Mr Megson some money on account to alleviate some of the worst hardship in the village at once. I told him to assess people’s needs and spend it carefully. Is he doing some kind of food distribution?’
I could not help myself. I laughed out loud. ‘No!’ I said. ‘They’re having a party.’
We rounded the bend and John could see the table nearly ready for dinner and the people bringing stools and round logs of wood from the cottages to serve as chairs.
Then I froze, because the Dench cottage door opened and a man came out. He was upon us before I could give a warning cry. He did not even see us. He had a great saucepan of boiling soup in his hands and his eyes were on the steaming liquid and not where he was going.
It was the outlaw John Dench. It was Clary’s uncle, the wounder of Richard’s horse Scheherazade, the Havering groom who had trusted me to ride her. I knew him the second I saw him. But I did not know what to do.
‘Look out, man!’ Uncle John said abruptly, and Dench stopped and looked up from the saucepan in sudden
