to be up with a guilt-stricken wriggle. And he took his weight from me, and helped me to my feet and pulled my creased skirts down for me with as much courtesy as if we were in a ballroom, and with a little secret smile to acknowledge the incongruity of it too. Then he sat himself back in the master chair and drew me to him again, and I laid my face against his cheek and smiled with secret delight, and nearly laughed aloud for my happiness.
When I opened my eyes we smiled at each other like conspirators.
‘Beatrice, you strumpet, you have to be betrothed after that!’ he said, and his voice was husky.
‘I suppose I am then,’ I said.
We stayed in my office as the sun set over the western fields and the evening star came out low on the horizon. The fire burned down to red embers and neither of us troubled to toss another log on. We kissed gently, lightly, and we also kissed hard and with passion. We talked a little, of nothing. Of the run we had out hunting that day, of Harry’s incompetence as Master. He did not ask me why I had been crying, and we made no plans. Then I saw the candles lit in Mama’s parlour, and the silhouette of the maid drawing the curtains.
‘I thought it would hurt,’ I said lazily, with one passing thought for my reputation as a virgin.
‘After the horses you ride?’ he asked with a smile in his voice. ‘I am surprised you noticed it at all!’
I chuckled aloud at that, unladylike; but I felt too easy to pretend to be anything other than my sated, smiling self.
‘I must go,’ I said, scarcely stirring. As idle as a stroked cat on his knee. ‘They will wonder where I am.’
‘Shall I come, and shall we tell them?’ asked John. He helped me stand and smoothed the back panel of my dress where the silk was creased and crushed from our long courting.
‘Not today,’ I said. ‘Let it be just for you and me, today. Come for dinner tomorrow, and we can tell them then.’
He bowed in mock obedience, and let himself out of the west-wing door, with one final gentle kiss. His visit had passed unnoticed by Mama, by Harry and by Celia, but I knew that all the servants in the house and all the stable lads would know that he had been with me, and how long he had stayed. That was why no candles had been brought to my office as the light had faded. They had all conspired to leave John and me to court, like any village girl with her lover, in the gloaming by the fire. So, as is always the case, Wideacre people knew far more than Harry or Mama would ever have guessed.
Next day, when John came to take me for a drive before dinner, Harry, Mama and Celia paid little attention, but every servant in the house was smiling and peeping from the windows or hovering in the hall. Stride announced to me with elaborate ceremony that John was waiting in his curricle in the drive, and when he handed me up I felt as if I were being led to the altar. And I did not mind.
‘I trust you are not abducting me today,’ I said, and twirled my parasol, sunshine yellow, over my yellow bonnet and yellow woollen dress.
‘No, I’ll content myself with the sight of the sea from the top of your downs today,’ he said easily. ‘Do you think we can get the curricle up the bridle-way?’
‘It’ll be a squeeze,’ I said, measuring the shafts and the pair of glossy bays with my eyes. ‘But if you can drive a straight line it should be possible.’
He chuckled. ‘Oh, I’m a poor whipster, I know. Utterly incompetent. But you can always put a hand on the reins to keep me straight.’
I laughed outright. One of the things I liked about John MacAndrew the most was his immunity to my experimental slights. He had a hard core of resilience that meant he never winced at my attacks. He never even seemed challenged by them. He took them as part of a game we played – and he confessed incompetence or inadequacy without a blush, to bluff and double-bluff me into laughter and confession.
‘I beg your pardon,’ I said gaily. ‘I dare say you could drive your curricle and pair up the staircase without blowing the horses or scraping the varnish.’
‘I could indeed,’ he said modestly. ‘But I would never do it, Beatrice. I would never show you up. I know how ashamed you are of being cow-handed.’
I gave an irrepressible chuckle and gazed into his disconcertingly bright eyes. When he teased me in this way his eyes were as bright as if he were kissing me. Then he pulled the horses to a standstill before the fence and footstile up to the downs, and he climbed down from the driving seat and hitched the reins to the post.
‘They’ll keep,’ he said, dismissing hundreds of guineas of bloodstock as he held an arm to me as I dismounted. He held my hand as I climbed over the stile; walking up to the crest of the downs he still kept it. I should choose no other place for courtship. But I believe I should have been happier on that day if I had not been mere yards from where Ralph and I used to lie, hidden in bracken, or if I had not seen, a dozen yards to the right, the little hollow where I had slapped Harry’s face and ridden him to utter pleasure.
‘Beatrice,’ said John MacAndrew, and I turned my face up to his.
‘Beatrice …’ he said again.
It is as Ralph said. There are those who love and those who are loved. John MacAndrew was a great giver of love and all his wit and all his wisdom could not prevent him loving and loving and loving me, whatever the price. All I had to do was to say yes.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘I wrote to my father some weeks ago to acquaint him of my feelings, and he has treated me well; I should say generously,’ said John. ‘He has given me my shares of the MacAndrew Line outright, to do with what I will.’ He smiled. ‘It is a fortune, Beatrice. Enough to buy Wideacre over and over.’
‘It’s entailed; Harry could not sell,’ I said, my interest suddenly sharpened.
‘Aye, that’s all you think of, isn’t it?’ said John ruefully. ‘I meant only to tell you that it is a fortune enough to buy or rent any nearby property you desire. I have told my father that I shall never return to Scotland. I have told him that I will marry an Englishwoman. A proud, difficult, stubborn Englishwoman. And love her, if she will let me, every day of her life.’
I turned to him, my eyes bright with tenderness, my face smiling with love. After Ralph I had not expected to love again. With Harry, I had thought my passion would last for ever. But now I could scarcely remember the colour of their eyes. I could see nothing but John’s blue eyes bright with love and the smile of tenderness on his face.
‘And I shall live here?’ I asked, confirming my luck.
‘And you shall live here,’ he promised. ‘If the worst comes to the worst I shall buy the Wideacre pigsties for you, so long as we are on the sacred soil. Will that satisfy you?’ In impatience and in love he scooped me up into his arms and held me, hard as iron. In a great sweep of my familiar half-forgotten sensuality I felt my knees buckle beneath me when I was held by a passionate man again. When we broke apart we were both breathing in gasps.
‘So we are formally affianced?’ he demanded tersely. ‘You will marry me, and we will live here, and we will announce it at dinner?’
‘I will,’ I said, as solemnly as any bride. I thought of the baby heavy in my lower belly, and the warmth of desire lighting me up. And a leaping satisfaction in the MacAndrew fortune with which I could do so much for Wideacre.
‘I will,’ I said.
We clasped hands and turned back to the curricle. The horses had stood quiet, nibbling at the dark leaves of the autumn hawthorn hedge, and a blackbird sang sadly in the wood.
John had to back down the narrow track until we came to a gateway where we could turn, then he held the horses in hard down the length of the bridle-way until we were on the level sweep of the drive and heading for home.
The beech leaves fell around us like bridal rice as we passed slowly up the drive; John was in no hurry to be home. The copper beech trees were purple-black