his arms to me and I went into his embrace and let him hold me and kiss me in the dark shadows of the barn.
‘I have been longing for you,’ he whispered in my ear as his hands moved quickly over my body, opening the front of my dress. I sighed as he smoothed my breasts and he bent his head and kissed me. His stubbled chin scratched my cheek and then my throat as his head dropped down the open gown. I shivered as I felt his warm breath on my neck.
Above us the last late swallows lined up on the old beam. I saw and heard nothing but the dark outline of his head and the steady, rapid sound of his breath.
‘Oh, it is so good to touch you,’ Ralph said earnestly, as if there could be any doubt. He pressed me backwards to a heap of straw and lifted my skirts and petticoats.
‘When we have each other and Wideacre, that will be a pleasure, eh, Beatrice? When we make love as man and wife in the great master bedroom at Wideacre? When I come to you like this, in the great carved bed under embroidered quilted covers and between fresh linen sheets like I was gentry born and bred?’
We closed together, and his words went unanswered as I clung to him, begging him to move faster and faster, harder and harder. I groaned like a dying man as easy passion overwhelmed our destiny and the world grew dark and still as if a great wave had washed over me and drowned me. Alone, I was yet enveloped and held by Ralph as he thrashed, and he groaned too and lay still. Then the feelings drained from me, and left me weak but clear-headed and cold as ice. I had a sense of deep, sudden sorrow for the pleasure that had gone so fast and left me so empty. And because that moment, that precise moment, would never come again.
‘That’s a good, dutiful wife,’ Ralph said, teasingly. ‘That is how it will be in the master bedroom. I shall sleep between linen sheets every night of my life, and you may bring me coffee in bed every morning.’
I smiled at him under my half-closed eyelids.
‘Shall we spend all our time here?’ I asked. ‘Or shall we go to London for the season?’
Ralph sighed luxuriously and lay back beside me, hands behind his head, his breeches still around his ankles.
‘I’m not sure,’ he said deliberately. ‘I’ll have to decide. Winter in town would be nice, but there’s the fox hunting and shooting here. I wouldn’t want to miss that.’
My lips curled in a smile, but no trace of sarcasm crept into my voice.
‘Do you think you can take my father’s place?’ I asked. ‘D’you think the county gentry will accept you when they’ve know you as Ralph, the gamekeeper’s lad, the son of Meg the gypsy and a runaway father?’
Ralph was unmoved. Nothing could penetrate his contentment. ‘I don’t see why not,’ he said. ‘I’m no worse than they were a dozen generations ago. I’ll have earned my place at Wideacre, which is more than they have done to gain theirs.’
‘Earned it!’ I could scarcely keep the disdain from my voice, but I kept my tone sweet. ‘Odd work you have done this day, Ralph! Murder and unchastity!’
‘Ah, hard words,’ Ralph said negligently. ‘A sin is a sin. I’ll take my chance at the Day of Judgement with this on my conscience. Any man in the country would have done the same. I’m prepared to stand alone. I don’t share the blame with you, Beatrice. I planned it. I’ll take the guilt and the consequences. I did the act – I did it partly for you and partly for our future together – but I’ll take the blame alone in this world or the next.’
The tension sloughed off me like a snake’s skin. It was his crime. I was innocent.
‘You did it quite alone?’ I questioned. ‘You had no one to help you at all? You spoke of it with no one but me?’
He tightened his grip on me and touched my face in a gentle caress. He had no idea his life hung on a thread. He had no idea when he had snapped that thread in two.
‘I work alone,’ he said proudly. ‘There’ll be no gossip in the village, no tongues wagging, no fingers pointing. I would not risk that for myself, and I would especially not risk it for you, Beatrice. I did it alone. No one but you and I know.’
He touched my face with his fingertips in one of his rare, precious caresses. I saw in his eyes and in his gentle smile his tenderness for me, and the slow and steady growth of a love that would last as long as our two hearts were beating in time with Wideacre. Despite my anger, I felt tears prickle behind my eyes and my mouth quivered when I tried to smile back at his loving face. How could I help but love him – whatever he was? He was my first love and had risked everything to give me the greatest gift any man would ever be able to give me: Wideacre.
I lost my childhood on the road on that damp spring day when my papa spoke of my banishment. I lost my contented, easy childhood in the moment when I realized he would take Wideacre from me, would take it to favour Harry, with no thought of me and my pain at all. But that hurt was healed when I lay in Ralph’s arms and knew he had gambled everything to have me and Wideacre. And my tears rose at the thought of the reckless, gallant gamble he had so utterly lost.
Ralph had a dream, a hopeless, impossible dream, that only a very young lover could have. The two of us, married despite the conventions, as if the world were some paradise from romance where people may marry the love of their hearts and live where they wish. As if all that truly matters is love and passion and loyalty to the land.
It was a dream of the future that could never have been, and the only stupid mistake I ever saw Ralph make was to forget that however often we tumbled in straw, grass or bracken, or whatever I called out in my fainting pleasure at the strength and skill of his hard force, he was just a servant, the son of a slattern. And I was a Lacey of Wideacre. If it had been any other land I swear I would have sacrificed it for Ralph. If it had been any other house I believe I would have schemed to put him into it. Any other house in the land and Ralph should have slept in the master bed and sat at the head of the table. Any other land in the country could not have hoped for a better master than Ralph.
But it was not any land or any house. It was my beloved Wideacre. And no damned gypsy’s brat would ever rule there.
The gulf between Ralph and me was as wide as the Fenny in flood, and as deep as the green millpond. I might take Ralph for pleasure, but I would never be his woman, his wife. The moment Ralph thought to rule me, he made our end certain.
Besides – how could he have forgotten? – he was of gypsy stock; he understood he was my father’s assassin. And I would never, ever forgive him.
In my mind was a vivid, angry picture of my father, the brave, bright Squire, being pulled down and clubbed to death like a brawling common man in a back-street fight. The man with Lacey blood on his hand would never live on Wideacre. The poor man who attacked the gentry would never hide here. The upstart who planned to climb the ladder to the master bedroom through lust and bedding and blood should be destroyed, like any vermin on the land, at once.
When one says at once at fifteen one means at once. That meant my father died the day after Ralph’s ugly egg of a plan hatched its nightmare brood. That meant Ralph must die with my father’s blood still wet on his hands.
‘It is our secret then,’ I said. ‘And it dies when we die. And now, I must be going.’ He helped me to my feet and dusted my black mourning dress. The straws clung to it and he knelt and with meticulous care picked off every incriminating speck.
‘It will be better when I have Tyacke’s cottage,’ he said impatiently. ‘See to it that your brother expels the Tyackes first thing in the morning. I can’t wait for the old man to die. He can die in the poorhouse if he wishes. I’d like to move in there this quarter day, and there’s no cause to wait now. See to it in the morning, Beatrice.’
‘Of course,’ I said submissively. ‘Is there anything else while I’m speaking with Harry?’
‘Well, I’ll need a horse soon,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps one of your father’s hunters? I suppose brother Harry won’t be riding out for a while,