I tucked the letter into the pocket of my breeches to show Will when I met him in the fields at midday.

It was good to know that I had not disappointed James Fortescue. He was the only contact with the mother I had never known, Julia Lacey. If he could see that we were trying to build a new world, to be new people, maybe she would have understood too.

It was only Mr Fortescue who had worried me. I did not think of Perry at all. All of the Haverings, all of their bright talkative social world, had fallen away from me as if it had never been. They had gone, I could barely remember the meaningless lessons I had learned from them and the empty life I had lived with them.

Lizzie and I returned our attention to the flowerbed. Will had promised me a rose bush in the middle of the patch of earth and Lizzie and I were turning over the soil and digging in muck. My thoughts were running so much on James Fortescue and his letter, that when I heard hooves coming up the lane and the noise of carriage wheels, I straightened and scooped Lizzie up and set her on my hip to go down to the little garden gate, thinking I would see a hired post-chaise, and James smiling out of the window.

It was a bright morning and I put up my hand to shield my eyes, the other hand clasped around Lizzie’s little body, her chubby arms around my neck. With a shock of sudden surprise I saw that it was not James’s carriage pulling up outside my little gate. It was the Havering crest, and as the footman lowered the steps I saw it was Perry on his own.

‘Sarah?’ he asked in bewilderment. He came down the steps, blinking in the bright sunlight. ‘Sarah?’

I saw he was so bad with drink, that he could hardly recognize me. He was shaking, and his eyes were clogged with sleep and screwed up against the light. The footman was standing like a block, eyes straight forward. A man trained so well that he could appear deaf and dumb, especially when dragged into scandal such as this. Perry put a hand out on the footman’s shoulder and leaned on him like one might lean on a gate.

‘Is that a baby?’ he asked, bewildered.

‘No I ain’t!’ said Lizzie, immediately argumentative.

I tightened my grip to hush her and I said, ‘It’s a little girl, Perry, Will Tyacke is her da. I look after her with him.’

He looked past me and Lizzie to the little cottage. There were a few late-blooming roses still in frozen buds around the front door. A bush of forsythia was yellow as brass at the garden wall.

‘Charming!’ he said uncertainly. Then he paused. It was as if he did not know what more to say.

‘I’ve come to fetch you home,’ he said. His mama’s lesson had suddenly returned to his wandering mind. ‘If you come at once there’ll be no scandal and I’ll say no more about it. I will forgive you,’ he said pompously. ‘We can live in the country all the time if you wish. I’ll give up gambling, and I’ll give up drinking.’

He paused for a moment and screwed up his eyes as if he were trying to recapture some thought. ‘No!’ he said. ‘I’ve given up already. Shock of your leaving us like that. I’ve given it all up already. So you should come back.’

‘Oh Perry!’ I said gently. ‘What is in your pocket?’

Blinking owlishly he put his hand into his right pocket and then flinched as he closed his hand on the hip flask which I knew he would have there. From his other pocket he pulled out a handful of papers. They were gambling vowels: IOUs from other gamblers. The wintry wind caught a few of them and blew them down the street. It was small loss. I guessed they were useless.

‘No, Perry,’ I said softly. ‘I am not coming home. Tell your mama I thank her for her kindness and that I will not contest a divorce action. Tell her I have a criminal connection and she can have me put aside so that you can marry again. Tell her I am sorry, but I shall be living here on Wideacre with the man I love.’

Perry blinked again. He took out his flask and unstoppered it and took a swift swig. On the clean cold Wideacre air the smell of warm gin was sickly-sweet. He turned and stepped unsteadily back into the carriage. The footman, as impassive as a statue, folded the steps in and shut the door and swung on to the back of the carriage. His hands were blue with cold. He did not look at me.

Perry dropped the window holding the leather strap. ‘I don’t know what people will say about you,’ he said with the sudden spitefulness of a thwarted child. ‘They will say the most dreadful things, you know. You will never be able to go anywhere again. No one will blame me. No one will blame me at all. They will say you are at fault, and no one will call you Lady Havering ever again.’

I shifted Lizzie’s warm weight and I smiled at him with compassion. I was far from his world now. I was far from the world of the landed, of the squires, of the owners. I was the last of the Laceys and I had turned my back on ownership, I was trying a new way. I wanted to build a new world.

‘I don’t need your name,’ I said. ‘I don’t want your title. I am Will Tyacke’s whore, that’s good enough for me.’

‘Sarah…’ he said.

I stepped back a pace and the coachman flicked the horses.

‘My name is not Sarah,’ I said. And I smiled at him in my sudden certainty. ‘My name is not Sarah. My name is Meridon. Meridon; and this is where I belong.’

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I should like to thank Gerry Cottle and all the staff and artistes of his circus for the welcome they extended to me and my family when we stayed with them in the summer seasons in 1987 and 1988.

I owe special thanks to the Witney family: Derek, June, April and Lee-Ann who shared their family history with me, and taught me circus traditions – and (with less success) rosinback riding!

I am very grateful to Larry and Jill de Wit for their friendship, and for their unfailing patience with me both on the ground and terrifyingly high up on their trapeze.

And to Martin Lacey – the boy prince of ringmasters – whose courtesy and generosity made our visits such fun.

About the Author

Meridon

Philippa Gregory is an established writer and broadcaster for radio and television. She holds a PhD in eighteenth-century literature from the University of Edinburgh. She has been widely praised for her historical novels, including Earthly Joys, Virgin Earth and A Respectable Trade (which she adapted for BBC television), as well as her works of contemporary suspense. Philippa Gregory lives in the North of England with her family.


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BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Wideacre

The Favoured Child

The Wise Woman

Alice Hartley's Happiness

Fallen Skies

A Respectable Trade

Perfectly Correct

The Little House

Earthly Joys

Virgin Earth

Zelda’s Cut

Bread and Chocolate

The Other Boleyn Girl

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.


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