The Strawberry Season

by Jessica Stirling

Genres: Historical Romance

Synopsis

About fifteen years after the events in the last book Fay Ludlow, battered daugher-in-law of Innes, seeks refuge with her unknown mother-in- law on Mull with the abusive Tarrant men expected to follow her.

Release date: January 19, 2012

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 475

Sample

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Wildfire

 

‘Tea, Mr Rattenbury,’ Biddy said, ‘or would you prefer something stronger?’

‘Tea would be very nice,’ Patrick said, ‘but may I suggest that we hold off until we have completed our business.’

‘Of course,’ Biddy said. ‘Have you brought me your offer?’

‘My clients’ offer.’ Patrick corrected her, mildly. ‘No, there is some way to go before I can present you with a formal proposal and set a per-acre price.’

‘Why are you here then?’ Biddy asked, equally mildly. ‘Is it, perhaps, a social call? I would like to think that it is.’

It was mid-afternoon on Thursday. Patrick had arrived unexpectedly and had been fortunate to find Biddy at home.

She had planned to accompany Maggie into Tobermory that afternoon to shop for a length of good winter-weight cloth in the little haberdashery in Columba’s yard. The store was one of the few on the island where consignments of quality cloth turned up from time to time and word of a recently arrived shipment had spread quickly. Maggie, however, would not sacrifice a ‘big washing day’ for anything and she’d had Becky at the tubs since half past eight o’clock.

On ropes across the kitchen yard and on the grass of the lawns sheets and blankets were draped like bunting and Becky, red-cheeked but somewhat less than rosy, had been taking a breather when the horseman had come galloping over the hill. He had thundered up to the front of the house, spraying gravel in all directions, had reined the stallion in front of her and slipped nimbly from the saddle.

‘Is your mistress at home?’

‘If you meant my aunt, then I am thinking she is.’

‘Tell her that Patrick Rattenbury is here.’ He had offered Becky the reins. ‘Give my horse a rub down, will you?’

‘Damned if I will,’ Becky had said. ‘Do I look to you like a stable-boy?’

‘No, stable-boys have better manners. Is Mr Quigley about?’

‘I doubt it.’

‘In that case tell your mistress I’m here. I’ll attend to the horse myself.’

To Becky’s astonishment her aunt had been up and out in seconds, had scurried around the house until she found the Rattenbury person on the green by the gable where he had unsaddled the horse and was rubbing the sweat from his flanks with handfuls of grass.

At this point Becky had been summarily dismissed and had gone sulking back to the puddles and tubs in the kitchen yard to complain to Maggie about the manners of so-called gentlemen.

Prudently, Maggie had dried her hands, changed her apron and put a kettle to boil in readiness for a summoning bell. But there had been no summoning bell, no sound at all from upstairs.

‘In point of fact,’ Patrick said, ‘I’m here to do a little business on my own account.’

‘Are you, indeed?’ said Biddy.

She was not at her most alert yet. She had been dozing in the sunlit library with a great folio of botanical prints flopping on her knee.

Becky’s abrupt appearance had startled her. She had been mulling over Quig’s changed attitude and mentally experimenting with the possibility that she might take revenge on her husband by selling the whole place out from under him.

Pictures of swollen green leaves and coarse trunks in jungle settings in the book on her knee had stirred a vague kind of sexual yearning in her and Patrick Rattenbury had not been a million miles from her thoughts when her niece, even more petulant than usual, had flung open the door with a, ‘Oh, so there you are,’ and had announced the agent’s arrival.

‘I believe,’ Patrick said, ‘that you have several vacant properties on Fetternish. I wonder if you would be prepared to rent one out to me for, say, a six-month period?’

‘Ah!’ said Biddy. ‘Oh!’

‘I’m told that the old stables are partly furnished and may be suitable for immediate occupancy.’

‘Who told you that? My husband?’

‘Miss Brown, the schoolteacher.’

‘Janetta?’ Biddy said. ‘I was not aware that you were on any sort of terms with Netta Brown?’

‘I dined with her father and she last evening.’

‘Did you?’ said Biddy. ‘Well, Gillies is renowned for his hospitality.’

‘Concerning the stables  . . .’

‘Have you seen them?’

‘Not yet.’

‘They are large, too large, perhaps, to suit a single gentleman.’

‘And his horse,’ Patrick reminded her.

Oblivious to humour at that moment, Biddy frowned.

She was seated in the sagging armchair that she’d had Quig bring up from the cellar some months ago, a chair that had been her mother’s favourite in the last years of her life. It was not the sort of piece that would fit into any other room, not even the great hall, but its broken springs and clotted horsehair were accommodating and comfortable. She was no longer indifferent to creature comforts and assumed that in a year or two she would become just as sluggish and lackadaisical as Vassie had done latterly.

Rushing out to greet Patrick Rattenbury had left her slightly breathless and her colour, she knew, was high.

She resisted tampering with her hair.

‘Why,’ she said at length, ‘would you want to reside on Fetternish?’

‘I have to “reside” somewhere,’ Patrick said.

‘Has Frances Hollander no properties for rent?’

‘In actual fact, no, she does not.’

‘I must ask you, Patrick: is this a ruse to persuade me to sell my land?’

‘When it comes to persuasion,’ Patrick said, ‘I am much less devious than you give me credit for. It will be the terms of the offer that will persuade you. Cash, profit, that sort of thing. The truth is that I need somewhere to stay before the fleas and the bad food in the Arms turn me into skin and bone.’

‘You are a long way from skin and bone.’ Biddy did not intend the remark to be humorous or suggestive. ‘I assume by what you’ve said that you intend to stay on Mull for some time.’

‘I do.’

‘What, however, if I reject your clients’ offer? What then?’

‘I will submit another on their behalf.’

‘And if I reject that one too?’ said Biddy.

‘There are other landowners, other bits of ground that might suit our plans.’

‘What are these plans?’ said Biddy.

‘I thought I’d made that very clear,’ said Patrick. ‘Forestry.’

He sat on a narrow high-backed chair of painted beech that Austin had claimed had once belonged to a German prince. Biddy had never bothered to find out if it was true or not, but she admired the princely manner in which Patrick Rattenbury occupied the rackety antique, his buttocks perched on the edge of the tattered seat, his ankles crossed, knees spread. Under the smooth cloth of his riding breeches she could see the shape and strength of his thighs and, recalling the muscular agility of her long-ago lover, Iain Carbery, experienced an indefinable yearning that linked past and present.

So far she had remained true to Quig; but had she been happy being true to Quig? That was another question entirely.

Patrick Rattenbury was no disdainful young gamecock. He was close to her age and exhibited all the confidence of a man who had taken his pleasure without tumbling into the pitfall of matrimony. What if he did want her only to hew off a piece of Fetternish and help earn his commission? What did that matter now that the world about her was crumbling and her own sweet days were numbered? Who would know or care if she allowed the passion in her heart to leap up again, that wild fire that had been all but snuffed out by financial worries and Quig’s blundering neglect?

She was not too old to fall in love again.

She said, ‘How much of Fetternish do you want?’

‘Eight hundred acres to the north-east.’

‘An Fhearann Cáirdeil?’

‘Yes.’

‘I suppose you will tell me that it would hardly be missed?’

‘Well, would it?’

‘No, I suppose in honesty it wouldn’t,’ Biddy said.

She did not know why she had steered the conversation back to matters that had already been discussed, to have him repeat facts that she had already stored in her head. She was delaying, holding back, playing the old game. She did not want to appear too eager to grant his request. The very thought of having Patrick Rattenbury installed in the old stable building, a half-mile from her doorstep, fostered all sorts of fond imaginings, however, together with the notion that she might teach Quig a lesson by having a ‘friend’ to spend time with, to balance out his friendship with the Ludlow girl: she had always been able to justify her wilfulness.

‘What else?’ Biddy said.

‘Else?’

‘What other parts of Fetternish would you like to lay hands on?’

‘There’s a stretch of moorland behind the farm at Pennypol that might convert to forestry.’

‘On the shore?’

‘Behind the shore.’

‘Have you sampled it?’

Patrick shook his head. ‘I am not one to rush things, Mrs Quigley.’

‘Are you not now, Mr Rattenbury?’

‘Do you think it might ease matters if we reverted to Bridget and Patrick?’

‘I have no objection to reverting to Biddy and Patrick.’

‘Or at least to letting me have a look at the stables?’

He had given her the lead. He had done it promptly and with style, Biddy thought. She knew that Patrick was flirting with her, that it was no whim, no charming spasm or accident of interpretation; he was as seriously interested in her as she was in him.

She felt her limbs grow light and slender, blood race faster through her veins and her brain, dulled not by age but by her husband’s ineptitude, become sharp and calculating once more.

She stretched out her hand to the bell on the table.

‘Shall we have tea first, Patrick?’

‘No,’ he said, thrusting himself out of the chair. ‘No, Biddy, let’s do it now.’

‘Shall we walk,’ she said, ‘or would you prefer to ride?’

‘We’ll walk, I think,’ he said.

‘And keep the horse for another day?’

‘Yes.’ He laughed at last. ‘And keep the horse for another day.’

 

 

It was not unusual for Frances to throw a tantrum. As a rule, she fumed only in her bedroom or, if Florence or Valerie were about, would take herself out of house to stamp her feet and scream until all her frustration had been discharged, after which, flushed but calm, she would reappear and be her sunny little self again.

Dorothea was not deceived by the character that Frances presented to the world at large. She had watched her daughter-in-law pass through many different phases in the course of their life together and nine years of mutual distrust had not softened Dorothea’s attitude to the unnatural woman who had lured her son into marriage. She was honest enough to acknowledge that Frances and she did share one common bond: that she, like Frances, had given away her heart far too freely and far too often.

She was waiting now for Frances to fall as she herself had fallen, for Larry to pick up the pieces, for everything to come together again. Every tantrum, every fresh outburst, therefore, signalled the possibility that Frances was a little closer to capitulation, that this time her resilience might not be up to it and that she would either return to Larry’s bed or, better still, agree to a bill of divorcement.

Frances’s mid-summer tantrum was as unexpected as it was loud.

When she heard the girl’s wails echo through the house Dorothea experienced a sudden relaxation of pain and an urge to get up and go downstairs.

She called out for Valerie who had been loitering on the landing.

‘What’s wrong with her this time?’

‘Don’t know, ma’am.’

‘What’s she shouting about?’

‘Can’t make it out, ma’am.’

‘Find my sticks. I ain’t sitting tight and letting her racket spoil my lunch.’

‘Are you a-going downstairs, Mrs Lafferty?’

‘Where the Saint Christopher do you think I’m going? Of course I’m going downstairs.’

‘It’s a long way down, ma’am.’

‘Not nearly as long as the way up, girl, so fetch my sticks tout de suite.’

Frances was in the morning-room which was wide, airy and bright. It had been furnished in accordance with Dorothea’s instructions with blonde modern pieces, pastel cushioning and a hint of Paris chic in the choice of wallpaper and carpeting. She had locked the door before she had thrown herself down upon the silk-upholstered sofa to drum her heels and beat her fists into the cushions and set up such a wailing that she could be heard halfway to the beach.

Dorothea made it downstairs in five minutes, during which time Frances’s cries diminished into violent sobbing.

‘Is the door locked?’

‘Yes, Mrs Lafferty.’

‘Do you have the key I gave you?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘Well, don’t stand there like Tom Dooley. Open it.’

Valerie unlocked the door, flung it open and stepped quickly to one side as Dorothea hobbled past her and propelled herself into the room.

Startled but not embarrassed, Frances looked up. She was on her knees or, rather, draped half on the carpet and half on the sofa in a pose of maidenly distress that was part of every actress’s repertoire.

Dorothea fixed the base of her crutches firmly into the carpet and took all her weight upon her arms. ‘And what’s wrong with you?’

‘I don’t wish to be disturbed.’

‘Then you should have gone outside like you usually do.’

Frances shifted against the sofa and stretched out her arm. She did not look elegant but she did seem vulnerable. Her nose was pink, her eyelids puffy, her hair plastered to her forehead in moist, crinkled bangs.

‘What is it? Tell Mamma.’

‘I do not wish to discuss it.’

‘Valerie, close the door.’

Valerie closed the door.

Dorothea slung her arms across the padded tee-pieces and hung there, suspended. She had been faster, more nimble in the old days: on that day in the spring of ’96, for instance, when she had bounded up the hotel staircase to find Iain Carbery – her last, best love – lying as Frances was now, half on, half off the sofa with the side of his head blown away and the stink of powder still rife in the room.

‘Come on now, chicken, tell Mamma what ails you?’

‘It is, frankly, none of your business.’

‘Sure, it’s my business.’ Odd how her accent billowed about: pure Boston for Larry, pure Chicago for Macklin; with Iain she had usually been as Scottish as oatcakes or mince collops. ‘Everything you do, honey, is my business. If you’re down in the mouth then it’s my business to find out why.’

‘She took him home.’

‘Pardon me?’

‘She’ – Frances sniffed – ‘she took him home for supper.’

‘What,’ said Dorothea, ‘dead on a pole?’

‘I don’t see what’s funny about it.’

‘And I don’t know what the heck you’re talking about.’

‘Janetta. She took Patrick home for supper.’

‘God Almighty! Is that what this tragic performance is all about? Some feller. No, wait, it ain’t just any old feller, is it? It ain’t Patrick Rattenbury’s fickleness that’s got you hopping mad. It’s her, isn’t it, it’s the schoolmarm?’ Dorothea’s laughter shook her bosom. She swayed and braced one aching foot on the carpet. ‘It’s the schoolteacher. You’ve fallen for the goddamned schoolteacher, and she’s given you the iffy.’

‘Do you know how vulgar you sound?’

‘Sure, I know how vulgar I sound,’ Dorothea said. ‘What did you do to scare this one off? You’re losing your touch. Lack of practice taking its toll?’

‘I,’ Frances said, ‘love her.’

‘Balderdash!’

‘What would you know about falling in love?’

‘Some,’ Dorothea said. ‘But then again, only with men.’

‘At least my lovers don’t go shooting themselves in the head.’

Dorothea was not offended, for even malicious remarks about the manner of his dying helped restore Iain to her for a moment or two.

‘Anyhow,’ she said, ‘Iain didn’t kill himself for love. He killed himself because he was dying anyway. He went out quick to save me suffering.’

‘Well, I’m not going to kill myself,’ said Frances.

‘More’s the pity.’

Frances was recovering. She tucked her knees under her and, very deliberately, seated herself on the sofa and folded her arms.

‘How long are you going to stand there, Mama?’

‘As long as I have to,’ Dorothea said. ‘I ain’t going to fall down.’

‘I’m all right now. I was upset when I heard.’

‘How did you hear?’

‘Letter from Maggie Naismith.’

‘Is that all she did – the teacher, I mean – invite him home for supper?’

‘Yes, but we can all guess what’s behind it, can’t we?’

‘Can we?’ said Dorothea. ‘You scared her, didn’t you, Frances? You told her you loved her.’

‘No, I did not.’

‘What was it this time? A kiss, another damned kiss in the wrong place at the wrong time. She was never for you.’

‘You don’t know her as I do. In fact, you don’t know her at all.’

‘Perhaps not,’ said Dorothea. ‘That’s not the issue. The issue is that you’d better leave her alone. She’s the local schoolteacher, for God’s sake. These people aren’t going to understand what you’re doing to her or what you could possibly want to do with her.’

‘I just want to be her friend.’

‘You don’t really love her, Frances, do you?’

‘I believe I do.’

‘You’re bored, that’s all.’

‘Of course I’m bored. I’m bloody bored.’

‘You don’t have to stay here. You can leave any time.’

‘And go where, with what?’ said Frances.

Dorothea’s strength was giving out. The ache gnawed at her joints and pain slithered in her wasted muscles. Her chest hurt. She would need to get back upstairs soon, take two of her pills and lie down. Her smile was puckered.

‘Go anywhere,’ she said. ‘I’ll pay your fare to the mainland. How’s that?’

‘You won’t get rid of me as easily as all that. No, Mama, I prefer to wait for Larry.’

‘What if he doesn’t come?’

‘Larry always turns up sooner or later.’

‘Whether he does or not,’ Dorothea said, ‘you’d better cut out this nonsense with the schoolteacher.’

‘What nonsense?’

‘You know what I mean. I don’t want you cracking up on me and ruining what little I’ve got left of my respectability.’

‘Power, you mean,’ Frances said. ‘Power, not respectability.’

‘I won’t have you wrecking my plans, Frances,’ Dorothea said, ‘not over some skittish schoolteacher who’s apparently taken more of a shine to Patrick Rattenbury than you consider right. Besides, all she did was cook him supper. She hasn’t gone to bed with him yet, has she?’

‘How do I know what she’s done, or what she plans to do?’

‘What did you do to her?’

‘I gave her a sign of my affection.’

‘You scared her.’

‘She has nothing to be scared of. She loves me. She just won’t admit it.’

‘She doesn’t even know what you mean by “love”. I reckon you’ve scared her off for good and all, like that woman in Antibes, what was her name?’

‘Claudette.’

‘That’s the feller,’ Dorothea said. ‘You were lucky her husband didn’t find out what was on your mind or he’d have murdered you on the spot.’

‘You don’t understand any of this, do you, Mama?’

‘I’m here to do business. I don’t want you wrecking my plans with your perverted seductions. If you do  . . .’

‘What? You’ll cut me off without a penny?’ Frances hunched her shoulders and cupped her hands over her ears. ‘Ooooh, shiver, shiver. I don’t have a penny, in case you hadn’t noticed, not a damned red cent. But I will have. When Larry decides that he wants to marry again then the only way you’ll get me to sign a bill of divorcement is to pay sweet for my signature.’ She rose from the sofa and stretched her arms above her head. Grief, anger and frustration had all evaporated. ‘What would you say if I decided to fall in love with Patrick Rattenbury? What would you do if I entered into an affair with your land agent?’

‘That isn’t going to happen,’ Dorothea said.

‘It might.’ Frances cocked her head coyly. ‘Teach you a lesson, wouldn’t it, Mama? Teach my teacher a lesson too.’

‘Patrick Rattenbury knows what you’re made of.’

‘He thinks he knows what I’m made of. I’m sure I could change his mind.’

‘Bluff,’ Dorothea said. ‘Bluff, bluff, bluff.’

‘Are you sure, Mama?’

‘I’m certain,’ Dorothea said. ‘What did you really do to her?’

‘I kissed her.’

‘And I presume she was disgusted, as any decent woman would be.’

‘Oh, no.’ It was Frances’s turn to smile. ‘She liked it. I know she did. She liked it and that’s what she’s afraid of.’

The pain had become almost unbearable. She craved the relief that her morphine pills would bring: four, not two; four, and a long sleep, a sleep so deep that she would not have to face her daughter-in-law again before nightfall. When Frances moved to support her, she shrugged one crutch from the floor and slowly rotated her hips, bringing herself round to face the door.

‘Valerie,’ she called out. ‘Valerie, open the goddamned door.’ Then, with only the servant to help her, she crabbed out into the hallway and hauled herself up the staircase to lie, like one dead, on the bed.

 

 

No one, not even her father, could have guessed how much nerve it took Janetta to walk out to the Fetternish stables.

She had been upset by Patrick’s abrupt departure from the McKinnon Arms and the fact that he had given her no explanation and no warning.

She had, of course, no right to expect it of him. There was nothing between them, no obligation on either side, yet she could not help but feel that he had been, at best, impolite. He had been served supper at the schoolhouse several times and had, as it were, made himself thoroughly at home. Even on his last visit he had said nothing about moving from the inn to the stables, nothing about reaching an arrangement with Biddy Quigley.

Frances too had been giving her the cold shoulder. She had been hurt by the woman’s sudden indifference. Could it be, she wondered, that Frances had lost interest in her? Had she totally misinterpreted the nature of their friendship? Had Patrick been in cahoots with Frances all along, perhaps, and she was somehow being used simply to further the Hollanders’ ends?

In class she was snappish.

At home she was sullen.

Patrick had been gone for six days before she lost patience and, as soon as supper was over, put on her hat and gloves and made for the door.

‘Where are you off to, dearest?’ Gillies asked.

‘I am going for a walk.’

‘A walk? Well!’

‘Am I not entitled to go walking if I feel like it?’

‘Of course you are. Will you be late?’

‘No, an hour at most.’

‘If you happen to bump into . . .’ Gillies began, then changed his mind, cleared his throat and lifted his newspaper to cover his faux pas.

It was around eight o’clock when she reached the stables.

It was a beautiful summer’s evening, the sky clear, the sun still high, the shadows of the broom bushes and a clump of beeches dense and defining in the shallow glen where the stables stood. The buildings were of stone and, unlike most of the other properties that Biddy owned, rose tall against the skyline: two tall storeys crowned by a mortared chimney-head. There was a forge of sorts, stalls, sheds, a pump in an open yard and, as everywhere on Mull, a litter of discarded implements and broken carts decaying in the weeds behind an old manure pile.

The house itself was stark even on a bright June evening. There were no lights, no signs of life.

Janetta wondered if the information that Becky had passed to Innis and Innis had passed to her father was in fact false, if Patrick had taken lodgings elsewhere or had left Mull altogether.

She walked on, upright and purposeful, hiding her trepidation.

On the cobbles that bordered the yard she noticed fresh horse manure. In the yard itself a bucket filled with clean water, a spill of cornmeal and then in the big stall to the left of the carriage sheds she found Patrick’s unruly stallion, peacefully stabled for the night. Why he should be stabled when a fenced paddock lush with buttercups lay just over the knoll was more than she could fathom. Rakings from the stable, a musty pile of last season’s hay, a rake and a fork, another bucket, new and shiny, by the door of the dwelling house, then – and this surprised her – five shirts and five pairs of stockings hanging from a rope strung between two wooden posts: whatever else Patrick Rattenbury might be, he was clearly self-sufficient.

She glanced up at the chimney-head; a faint wisp of smoke rose against the untrammelled sky. Her chagrin dwindled, replaced by admiration for the speed with which Patrick had settled in to the Bells’ old dwelling and how swiftly he had begun to mark out his territory.

She did not knock upon the door, though, but waited for him to find her.

She heard him whistling, a tuneful melody complete in all its notes. She stepped away from the door. She did not wish him to think that she had been prying. The whistling continued, growing neither louder nor softer and seemingly sourceless, like the calling of peewits or the crying of a vixen.

She turned, and turned, spinning on her heels.

The whistling ceased.

Patrick said, ‘Well, well, if it isn’t my schoolteacher.’

He had come around the corner of the gable. His shirt was knotted by the sleeves around his neck and he was naked, quite naked to the waist. He wore patched riding breeches unbuckled at the knees, no boots or stockings, and carried a long-shafted mallet braced across his shoulder like a shotgun. His chest was matted with hair, curled damp with sweat, and a cloud of insects had followed him out of the wilderness.

‘I came to see if you needed anything,’ Janetta said. ‘Apparently you do not.’

Patrick laughed. ‘Not unless you happen to have a packet of fresh fish in your pocket, Janetta,’ he said. ‘Even if you don’t, I’m delighted to see you. I haven’t encountered a soul all day long, not even the estimable Quigley, and I could do with a little civilised company. Come in, come in while I clean myself up a bit.’

‘No, I  . . .’

‘Oh, come along,’ he said. ‘See what I’ve made of the place.’

‘I think – now that I see you’re – I think I should head home.’

‘Netta, Janetta, what are you afraid of? For goodness sake, there’s no one within five miles  . . .’

‘Two miles.’

‘Two then, if you must be accurate – two miles to tattle on us.’

He put down the mallet, resting the shaft against the wall. Within the stall the stallion let out a feathery snort and then a bray.

‘At least he’s pleased to see you,’ Janetta said.

He smelled, not unpleasantly, of the moor, the way her brothers had smelled when they had come trekking home after a long evening of races and chases in the scrub behind An Fhearann Cáirdeil. His hair was damp and lay in little Romanesque fringes across his balding brow. His body was downed with hair: Janetta had not realised that a well-to-do gentleman from Perth would have so much body hair, for she had assumed that something in his lineage or upbringing would have rendered him as smooth and well pressed as his clothes.

She wondered what he would think of her if he could see her unclothed: all lean and long-shanked and flat-chested. She doubted if he would be in the least impressed, or moved by the untamed impulses that roused the brute heroes of cheap fiction to behave without honour or scruple.

‘Aren’t you pleased to see me?’ Patrick asked.

‘I wasn’t sure that I’d be welcome.’

‘Not welcome? Why ever not?’

‘Was I supposed to guess where you’d gone?’

‘Ah!’ The exclamation had no more weight than a sigh. ‘My fault, my tactical error. I wanted to wait, you see.’

‘Wait? Until I’d forgotten who you were?’

‘Until I could invite you – and your father too, of course – to dinner.’

‘Patrick, I do not believe you.’ She meant it. ‘I think that you simply didn’t want to be bothered with a schoolteacher and his daughter now that we have served our purpose.’

He shook his head. ‘Unworthy, Janetta,’ he said. ‘Not worthy of you at all. Really, that’s so petty. Not all the world wags as it does in Crove.’

‘What’s wrong with Crove?’

‘Not a thing.’ Patrick loosed the knot at his throat and rubbed the shirt over his chest and belly. ‘You are just so – what? – sensitive to slights and suggestions that you always take things the wrong way. Actually, you’re not so very different from townies, but more, more  . . .’

‘Barbaric?’

‘There’s nothing barbarous about good manners,’ Patrick said. ‘And, I confess, my manners were not up to my best intentions. Come in, I’ll make tea and then I’ll take you home.’

‘Take me  . . .’

‘On horseback.’

‘I’m not going  . . .’

‘Oh, stop fretting, Janetta. Do come inside.’

He took her hand, claimed her hand in fact, and dragged her after him.

She should have resisted, but there was a force to him that she could not deny and the wide, empty sky under which she had dreamed so often of a man who would take her hand in his and lead her off was no longer wide and empty.

Meekly she allowed him to lead her into the house.

The Bells’ kitchen was large and plainly furnished, without dankness or dustiness to suggest that it had lain empty for several years. There was crockery on the table, jugs, pan