‘There’s a long tradition,’ I said awkwardly. ? belief that my family is somehow special on the land, that the Lacey heir can make the land grow, can make it especially fertile. And I feel that. I believe when I put my face to the ground, I can almost hear a heart beating at the very centre of the earth – as if it were a living thing and it loved me.’

Someone dropped a spoon and it clattered against a plate near me. I jumped and looked around me. I was not on Wideacre, I was many miles from my home. I was suddenly aware of the dozens of people in the coffee-house, of the hundreds of people in the town, and of my own arrogance and folly in claiming to be special. I shot a nervous look at James Fortescue. He was watching me, and in his face I could see nothing but quiet attentiveness.

‘Or at least, I did,’ I said. ‘I was very sure of it. But since I have told Dr Phillips, and had to explain it over and over, I am not so sure. I expect it was all nonsense.’

James Fortescue huffed in temper and caught one of my restless hands. ‘That is exactly what I don’t like about this Dr Phillips,’ he said. ‘It is the same thing for Marianne. When she started going to see him, she certainly did have trouble in eating proper food at proper times. I had some ideas about why that should be.


‘You have a small family and perhaps you live peacefully together,’ he said diffidently. ‘It is not the same everywhere. My papa and my mama have differences of opinion, and there are five of us generally sitting down to dinner together. When there is a disagreement, there is an argument which is often long and loud. You will know by now how sensitive Marianne is; she simply cannot tolerate raised voices. By refusing to eat, she was excused dinner with the family. I was certain that was the start of the difficulty, and at one time she thought so herself. But since she has been seeing Dr Phillips, she does not know herself what the matter might be. He has taken all her certainty from her and has nothing to put in its place but a vague sense that it is her fault and that she is somehow in the wrong.’

I nodded. I had already had some idea of this from Marianne herself. James would not have spoken of it if he had not known I was in her confidence.

‘I cannot imagine how she could blame herself,’ I said hesitantly.

‘I can,’ he said, ‘and you should be able to imagine it. When you came to Bath, I dare say you thought it perfectly all right that you should feel so special about your home. Now you think that feeling somehow wrong, and you are even in danger of losing it altogether!’

‘Oh no!’ I said. ‘I was already unhappy about what Wideacre meant to me…’ I broke off and looked at him.

‘Why?’ he asked, as gentle as a sister.

I hesitated, and then I found I could tell him. I did not tell him the version which Dr Phillips had persuaded me was the truth: that I had been awakened by the storm and calculated the danger of the spire falling on the village, that I had made a lucky guess. I told him that I believed I had been given a premonition, and that I had acted on it. I finished the story of that strange night in a rush and I kept my eyes down. It sounded so bizarre. But then I felt the brush of his fingertips on the back of my gloved hand and I looked up.

‘I could not do that,’ he said gently. ‘But I should be a fool indeed if I said that anything I could not do was beyond the ability of anyone else. Perhaps you have a special gift. Perhaps you should cherish that gift and use it, rather than trying to knock it out of yourself.’

I was about to reply – searching for words to thank him for that brief sentence which had suddenly returned to me a share of my lost confidence in Wideacre, in myself as an heir to Wideacre – when Marianne and Emily and Mary and Elizabeth came to the table in a flurry of bandboxes and news, and the moment when I could have thanked him was gone.

But I did not forget it. Although my days were now a whirl of outings, shopping, dances and conversations, each night before I slept I used to lie for a few minutes and think about the day. It seemed to me that I was gaining a new sort of assertiveness, that even while Dr Phillips stole from me my bright faith in myself as the squire of Wideacre and the favoured child of a magic tradition, Bath was teaching me the assurance of a pretty girl who could give an answer – pertly enough, maybe – and who could hold her head up and deal with her peers as equals. And as the acknowledged favourite of the most eligible young man in Bath that season, I had a confidence I would never have learned at home. I had James to thank for that too.

15

I had not been lying to James Fortescue when I told him that all the dances for the evening were taken. But he was right to be confident of me – I had saved the dance before supper so that he might take me from the bright crowded ballroom into the supper-room and sit down with me on a bench with half a dozen of the young people whom I now called my friends.

Mama had been playing cards and she came up behind me when I was at supper and dropped a hand on my shoulder to prevent me rising. ‘You stay,’ she said softly. ‘I don’t want you to leave early, but I have to go home. This beastly cold I took the other day outside the milliner’s has made me too hot to enjoy playing any more. It has so destroyed my judgement that I am likely to game away John’s fortune unless I leave.’

‘How will you get home?’ I asked.

‘I’ll take a chair,’ Mama said equably, ‘and I’ll send out one of Mrs Gibson’s men to bring a chair to fetch you home.’

‘Excuse me, Lady Lacey,’ James interrupted, rising to his feet, ‘but I beg you will not take such trouble. I will undertake to bring Miss Lacey safe home to you. And if you will allow me, I will go and make sure there is a chair waiting for you at the doorway now.’

Mama smiled. ‘Thank you, Mr Fortescue,’ she said. ‘I should have known that you would be so kind. I shall expect Julia home at eleven, when the ball closes.’

James gave her his arm and took her through the crowds of the supper-room to the bright hall beyond.

‘Lucky you!’ Mary Gillespie said under her breath. ‘I’d push my mama downstairs and break her leg if I thought James Fortescue would take me home.’


‘Mary!’ I exclaimed, and collapsed into giggles. ‘Anyway, it’s not true. You’d lock her in the cellar as well to be on the safe side.’

We were still laughing when James came back and he looked at the two of us suspiciously. ‘It’s true!’ he said. ‘My heart is set on Julia’s mama. She really is so fetching, Julia. She must have been stunning when she was young. Did she ever have a London season?’

‘I think so,’ I said. ‘But I believe she was shy and retiring and did not enjoy it.’

James nodded.

‘Like me,’ I added, keeping my face straight.

‘Very like,’ James said, equally grave. ‘I was saying to Marianne the other day that you would be quite pleasing if she could prevail upon you to put yourself forward a little more.’

‘You!…’ I started, but the quartet began playing in the other room.

‘Is this the last dance I can have with you this evening?’ he asked.

I flickered my dance programme before him with a smug beam. ‘It is,’ I said. ‘But there is no need to stay until the end of the ball. I dare say one of my other partners will escort me home if I ask.’

‘You are a baggage,’ he said feelingly. ‘Come and let me tread on your toes, Julia Lacey; and I hope I disable you for the rest of the evening.’

I laughed and went to dance with him, and then with George Gillespie, and with Sir Clive, and Major Peterson, and all the other new friends, until the quartet played the last dance and the clock struck eleven. The players started packing up their instruments, though Sir Peter Laverock went and begged them to play one more dance so that he could dance with me.

‘I am so sorry,’ James Fortescue said to him, sounding not at all sorry, ‘but I have promised Lady Lacey that I would see Miss Lacey home at eleven o’clock, and we must leave now.’

Sir Peter took one look at James Fortescue, and one look at my smiling face. ‘Well, really, James,’ he said. ‘I can’t like the thought of you walking all alone back from Gay Street. I’ll come with you both to see Miss Lacey safe home, and then walk with you.’

‘Very kind,’ said James. ‘But I couldn’t ask it of you.’

‘I insist,’ said Sir Peter, teasingly. ‘What do you say, Miss Lacey?’

James Fortescue offered me his arm with an air of absolute neutral courtesy, then he slid his hand on top of mine and pinched my fingers hard.

‘I will not trouble you, Sir Peter,’ I said politely, ‘and I’ll bid you good night and hope to see you tomorrow.’ Then, as we turned away, I said softly to James Fortescue, ‘And if I weren’t a lady, I’d kick you on the ankles!’

He laughed aloud at that and swept me to the entrance of the rooms. ‘Would you like a sedan chair?’ he asked. ‘Or can you brave the frosts and walk?’

I sniffed at the air. It was icy cold with a promise of snow behind it. I knew it lacked something, some scent I needed, and I turned my face up to the cloudless ink-black sky for some hint of it. I was missing the smell of my home, the faint scent of cold beech leaves, the hint of icy grass. I was far away from Wideacre tonight.

‘Let’s walk,’ I said, and we stepped out into the stars and I pulled the scarlet-lined hood of my new cape up over my head.

I had one hand tucked inside the furry recesses of my muff, and James Fortescue had the other under his arm, warm against his cloak. It was a brilliant night, as bright as only a winter night can be. The stars were as thick as meadow flowers across a purple-black sky, and the moon had that hazy halo which always means frost. Our footsteps clattered on the paving stones and we walked uphill from the Assembly Rooms with an easy, even pace, close together to get through the throng of dancers coming out and calling goodnight to each other. The chairmen shouted for people crossing the road to make way for them, and a linkboy ran up to us with a torch in his hand and said to James, ‘Light your way, sir?’