‘That is wonderful,’ I said, catching his enthusiasm as if I had not been planning this ever since I had recognized myself in little Julia, and felt Richard’s rights to the land as sharply as I felt my own.

‘How wonderful, Harry, if our two children could rule here after we are gone!’

Harry beamed. ‘To give Julia Wideacre would be worth almost any sacrifice,’ he said tenderly. ‘And to give your son an equal share in our home makes me almost as happy, Beatrice.’

‘You are so right, Harry,’ I said, as if I were congratulating him on his idea. ‘We should set it in train at once, don’t you think?’

Harry rolled towards me in his enthusiasm, and I lay back and readied myself to pay my dues. I could enjoy Harry; when I was full of fear or anxiety, I could even feel a need for him. But once my first easy lust was satisfied I wanted, more than any other pleasure, the delight of being in my own, solitary bed. But Harry was exhilarated at the exercise of his wit upon the problem of the entail, and I wanted him abed and tired and happy tonight, for there would be more to plan in the morning; I wanted him too tired to talk with Celia when he crept in beside her sleeping warmth.

‘Come to my office in the morning, and we will write to the London lawyers,’ I said, and sighed as if the pleasure of his kisses were too much for me. ‘Oh, Harry,’ I said, as if overwhelmed. ‘After breakfast, tomorrow.’

After Harry left me I had sat for two or three long hours gazing into the red embers, puzzling in my mind, giving myself this time like a gift. I was giving myself a chance to draw back. The next steps before me were like the first steps one takes on the crest of the downs where they slope so steeply that even the grass cannot grow. You take one step, then another, and then the height of the slope catches you and you cannot, cannot stop. And there would be no way of stopping the course I was on. And there would be no laughter at the speed and fright of it.

So I gave myself a few minutes to linger at the top and consider what I was doing. Just a couple of quiet hours beside the fire to test my own determination and to see if I could bear what I was about to do. I had to break the land, break it to pay for that entail. Hammer the earth and the people, and the rhythm of the seasons, until it yielded gold like blood to pay for this daredevil scheme.

You never farm for today. You always think of next season, next year, or the year beyond. You plant wheat for your own profit, but you plant trees for your heir. I was planting trees. I was planning fifty years ahead. I could not pour love and money and care into the land for some damned cousin; it had to be for my bone and my seed.

Whatever the cost.

It was as I had planned. After a night spent lovemaking with me, Harry had tumbled into bed beside his silent, sleeping wife, and barely exchanged more than a dozen words with her until we were all seated around the breakfast table in the warm June sunlight. Celia, dressed in a simple black gown trimmed with black lace, looked as lovely as a young woman who has enjoyed twelve hours’ sleep can look on a midsummer morning. Beside her I dare say I looked tired. I know I felt it. I was smiling, for everything that had seemed in conspiracy against me was flowing easily and sweetly my way again. I took a cup of French coffee from Celia with a word of thanks, and a slice of ham from the sideboard. Then the door opened and my husband came in.

He walked with a light and easy step as if he had not been drunk last night, and dead drunk every night for the last twelve. He smiled at Celia’s clear prettiness with real affection, and then his face turned to me and the smile became a sneer.

‘My lovely wife,’ he said, and his words were bitten off as if even speaking to me left a sour taste in his mouth.

‘Good morning,’ I said evenly, and took my place at the foot of the table.

‘Beatrice, I shall come to your office this morning to discuss that matter we mentioned last night,’ said Harry pompously, but I wished he had stayed silent.

‘Last night?’ John asked, his eyes on his plate. ‘Something you three talked over together?’

Celia was unruffled behind the silver coffee set. ‘No, these two were up all hours talking profit and loss as usual,’ she said. ‘You know how they are when they are planning for Wideacre, John.’

John shot a hard look at her under his sandy eyebrows.

‘I know how these two are together,’ he said briefly.

There was an awkward silence.

‘Certainly,’ I said smoothly to Harry. ‘And later I should like to take you to see what the Hale family has done to Reedy Hollow. They have built a little culvert and some drains. It makes that field a good dry field, but I am concerned about the melt-water in spring.’

‘You know the water levels better than anyone, Beatrice,’ said Harry. ‘But do you think they have considered using a water pump?’

Even with John’s icy, daunting presence at the table Celia and I could not resist an exchange of smiles.

‘Really, Harry,’ I said. ‘You are too old to play with toys. I think you will have to give up your pumps and your windmills and your ten-crop systems.’

Harry chuckled ruefully. ‘It’s just that they do such interesting things in the Fens,’ he said plaintively. ‘I should so like to have a pump at Wideacre.’

‘We’ll be digging dikes next,’ I said, teasing him. ‘You stick to Sussex ways in Sussex, Harry, and content yourself with being the most progressive farmer for miles around.’

Harry smiled back at me. ‘I will save, Beatrice,’ he said earnestly. ‘You know I only value these things for the benefits they bring the estate.’

‘Save for what?’ My husband’s tone was like a diamond cutting glass across the warm easy tone of the conversation. ‘Do you know what Harry is saving for, Celia?’ he repeated.

Celia looked blank, but her instinctive loyalty to Harry kept her mouth shut.

‘Harry and I have plans to establish a fund for the future of Julia and for Richard,’ I said smoothly. ‘To come from some of the profits of Wideacre. We have not any idea of the details yet, and we were proposing to talk about them, and about some rather boring farming plans, this morning. You and Celia are, of course, more than welcome to come to my office after breakfast, but it is hardly the sort of thing that interests either of you. And we are only at the talking stage.’

John’s eyes were as sharp as Celia’s were bland. ‘Planning for the future, Beatrice?’ he said, and anyone could have heard the suspicion and hatred in his voice. I shot a hard glance at the footman by the door but his face was correctly wooden. I knew him though; I knew them all. This one was one of the Hodgett lads, a son of the gatekeeper. He had been taken into the house by me after being in trouble with Harry’s keeper over a ferret he would set to work in the preserves. I saved him a beating; I saved his father some time and trouble. He adored me. There would be no rumour of this talk outside this room, except as an outburst by young Hal that Miss Beatrice’s young husband wasn’t worthy to kiss the ground she rode on.

‘Of course I plan for the future, John,’ I said, and I saw him wince when I used his name. ‘I plan for our baby, just like any mother. And I plan for you and me, just like any wife. You can be sure that I will always be thinking of you, and planning for you, just as long as you live.’

Celia looked relieved at the sweetness of my tone, and at the loving nature of the words. But John went pale and looked sickly as he heard the threat behind them. I would hear no more from him today. And I would find a way, I most certainly would find a way, to silence him for ever.

I rose from the table.

‘My room, in ten minutes, Harry?’ I asked.

Harry rose to his feet and nodded his assent as I made to leave. John was a little slow in rising to show his respect for me, and I waited, motionless, my eyes on him, until he had done so. His pushing back of bis chair was like a surly boy and I felt secret pleasure at mastering him, as steadily and as surely as one trains an ill-bred dog. But some dogs are such trouble that one puts a stone around their neck, and drops them in the Fenny.

I went to my office.

Anywhere at Wideacre I am at peace, but when I sit in the Squire’s chair with the great round rent table before me, and the papers on all the tenants tucked safe in the drawers, the map of the estate on the easel board, and the swallows swooping low outside the window, I am in bliss. This is where the heart of Wideacre beats. In the deep secret hidden places in the woods, in the son, sandy, sunny common, and on the high thyme-scented downs, but also here where the lives of the people, our people, are recorded in my clear ledgers, and their futures planned on the great charts of the desk. This is where the revenue comes in, in the weekly rents, in records of yields surpassing yields, in the banker’s orders from Chichester corn merchants, in the wool sale cheques, in the meat market gold. And this is where the wealth is spent: in the orders for equipment, for new stock, for new seed, and for the ceaseless buying for the house, which Celia seems to think is needed, and which I do not refuse. We live well on Wideacre, and my ledgers tell me, in reassuring thick black pen strokes on a white page, that we can afford to live well, for this country makes us rich.

And now this wealth, this steady circulation of paper and gold money must be diverted to a new reservoir — a fund to buy my son into the chair where I sit, into the room where I give the orders, into the land and into the power. Richard, my lovely baby, whose bath I would go and watch in a few minutes, would be Master here if any act, any act at all, of mine could put him in this place.