I gave a little gasp, and the courage which had been holding me steady and upright while we spoke suddenly deserted me and I felt weepy with relief. ‘Yes,’ I said.

Richard’s smile was sweet as a May morning. ‘We must plan,’ he said in a businesslike manner. ‘When will he be born? At the end of January?’

I paused. I had not thought of the birth of the child at all. All I had thought of was the distress it would cause my mama, and the shock to Uncle John, and the shame for me. But to hear Richard speak so confidently of the boy that would be born, that would be the next squire for Wideacre, made my spirits suddenly rise for the first time since I had conceived. The child would be a Wideacre baby as Richard and I had been. The child would be raised on Wideacre under the wide sweet skies of my home. And she – for I was certain that the baby was a girl – she would be my little daughter, and I would teach her about the land and how to farm it, and she might be the one to give the land back to the people that worked it.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I am nearly two months into my time.’

Richard nodded. ‘When does it start to show?’ he asked.

I frowned. Oh, I so wish Clary was alive!’ I said in sudden longing for her common sense and for her wealth of knowledge. ‘I am trying to remember from seeing Clary’s mother, and the other women. I think it starts showing about the third month. But, Richard, I want to be married at once. I have to be married before it starts to show!’

The note of panic in my voice made Richard smile his cruel teasing smile. ‘Yes,’ he said gently. ‘I am sure you do. I don’t think I have ever seen you so afraid of anything, Julia.’

I could not retort. I looked up at him and I knew my mouth was trembling.

‘It is all right,’ he said, his voice silky with his happiness at seeing me in fear, at hearing me beg. ‘I shall make the arrangements. Now, stop looking so scared, Julia, we must go back for tea.’

The arrangements were easier than I had thought possible. Richard was given a few days’ leave by his tutor and claimed the right to escort us back to Sussex. Once we were home, Mama and Uncle John were tolerant when Richard asked if we might use the curricle and said he wanted to drive me to the coast. They did not expect us home until late, and they did not know what time we left, for we were away in the morning before they were stirring. We drove in the pale early light down the road to Portsmouth, Richard whistling and singing snatches of songs. I was as quiet as if I were going to my own funeral rather than to my wedding. The motion of the carriage made me queasy and tired, and after we had stopped for breakfast and changed the horses, I laid my head on Richard’s shoulder and dozed.


An odd sight we must have looked when we drove into the city. I felt I should have been looking about me at the noise and the bustle and the hurry of people. But I stared around dull-eyed and noticed nothing. I was on my way to my wedding and I felt nothing but dread, and when I glanced sideways at Richard, my heart sank.

The streets narrowed, and the sound of the wheels on the cobbles was deafening. The pavements were very crowded, and people continually stepped out into the road so Richard had to pull up the horses all the time.

We were due at the quayside, where there was a captain greedy enough and careless enough to sell us a licence to say that he had married us when on a voyage outside the limit of coastal waters, where his authority was legal.

Richard was following a hand-drawn map spread out on his knee. His friend Wrigley from Chichester had made it out for him and advised him as to the name of the captain. There were no secrets. One young man, living only a few miles from Wideacre, knew that we were to be married, and no doubt Richard told him why. There were no secrets and there was no escaping my shame.

He turned the curricle into a hotel yard and snapped orders at the ostlers: we would be gone two hours and the horses were to be ready for our return. Then he gave me his arm, casually, as one might pick up a valise, and took me down the road to the quayside.

The harbour was a forest of masts, with sailors, impossibly high, clinging to sails and to rigging and clamouring like an aviary full of swearing parrots. I shadowed Richard and clung to his arm.

‘How will we ever find the right ship?’ I asked; and I knew with a sudden dread that I was hoping we would not find the right ship and that we might go home. Even Mama’s heartbreak and my shame was better than this hopeless roaming around in a town I did not know with a man whose true character I was just coming to learn.


‘It’s there,’ Richard said. This expedition, which was weakening me with every step we took, was high adventure to Richard; his eyes were sparkling, he was looking around him with excitement. ‘There it is!’ he said triumphantly. ‘Now to find the captain.’

Richard pushed me ahead of him up a narrow gangplank, and I kept my eyes on my footing and tried not to notice that half a dozen grubby faces had appeared over the side of the ship and were inspecting me and passing comment freely on my gown and my bonnet, and what we might want with their ship.

When we reached the deck, they had vanished, and Richard seemed to be deaf and blind to the discomfort of the situation.

‘Hey, there!’ he called confidently to one of the sailors who appeared, by his sprawling leisure, to be in charge of the crew who were slopping dirty water around the deck of the ship. ‘Where’s the captain?’

The man looked up from cleaning his nails with a long murderous knife, and eyed us carefully as if to consider whether or not we merited an answer. Richard put his hand in his coat pocket, and the chink of coins was a password. It struck me that Richard was very rich on this trip. Richard was very assured.

‘’Ee’s drunk again,’ the man said gloomily. He inspected us with open contempt. I flushed as he looked me up and down with disdain. He knew we were here for a secret marriage. He knew there was only one reason for a young girl of Quality to come to this dirty ship seeking out a drunken captain. He looked at me as though I were a wanton who might go with any man. I shrank back a little behind Richard’s shoulder, pulled my light cloak about my shoulders and turned up the collar to hide my face.

I had a feeling, an idea I could not have put in words, that there was some kind of omen for the future in that disdainful stare. I was to become the property of one man, but any man could look at me as he wished. I was a free woman no longer; and well might I shrink back behind Richard, for he was my protector. I would no longer command respect in my own right.


‘We’ll see him,’ Richard said. He did not notice my embarrassment, or he did not think it sufficiently important to check the man’s insolent gaze. The man shrugged, caring neither way, and then pointed rudely past us to a door. ‘Straight dahn there,’ he said, his accent sounding strange to my ears, which were accustomed to the gentle lilt of the Sussex voice.

Richard started for the companion-way, and I caught him up. ‘Richard,’ I said, staying him as he was about to descend. ‘If he is drunk, perhaps he cannot. . . Perhaps we should…Richard, wait!’ I said.

Richard set his feet either side of the ladder and slid skilfully down to the bottom. ‘Come down,’ he commanded me.

I hesitated. The crew on deck had stopped their work and were openly staring, and the man with the knife was watching me, expressionless. Even the sailors in the rigging were staring down at me. I gathered my skirts around me. Gripping the ladder in my hands, I clambered down till I was at Richard’s side.

The stench hit me like a physical blow. It was a smell compounded of vomit from a thousand seasick voyages, of old sweat, of injury and fear, of gunpowder and filthy clothes, of mouldy food and gangrene. I gagged and fumbled for my handkerchief and put it over my mouth, inhaling the smell of clean linen and eau-de-Cologne.

Richard looked at me, his expression hidden in the shadows of the ill-lit corridor. ‘What is it now?’ he demanded impatiently.

‘We cannot do it like this, Richard,’ I said urgently. ‘It is awful! There must be another way we can do this. We cannot be married here in this dirty place. It…it smells, Richard.’

He gave a quick exclamation under his breath and then he turned towards me and took hold of my arms, just above the elbows, in a grip so hard that I would have cried out had my fear of the place not been greater than the hurt.

‘Look here,’ Richard said savagely, ‘you wanted us to be lovers. You lay back on the floor and smiled. You put your arms around my neck. You said no but meant yes. You came home on horseback with Jem and held out your arms to me. If you had been unwilling, you would have struggled more. There is no such thing as rape, everyone knows that. You were willing, you could have stopped me, but you did not want to stop me. And when Jem found you, you told him that you had fallen from Misty. If you had been raped, you would have said so. You were willing. You were willing because you are a whore. And it is generous-very generous – of me to marry you.’

I gaped at him. His hard grip on my arms was nothing to the pain I felt under my ribs. Every time he said, ‘You’, the word was like a knife which made a little stab into my heart.

He was telling a partial truth, and in any case I was quite incapable of spotting an unjust accusation now. I had blamed myself from the moment I had realized what was happening on the floor of the summer-house. And a woman is always the one at fault. If I had been a true lady, if I had been truly pure, then Richard would not have done it. I had lost my virginity and that was enough to ruin me in everyone’s eyes – and in my own.