Sara had been in Alec’s thoughts day and night. He was thinking about her now while taking a bath before getting dressed for the big village event, his favourite for it was held entirely out of doors. The end of the evening was best: after the fun of the events, as darkness crept comfortingly down from the skies and the music turned to softer, quieter tones, the young and old alike would be lulled into a sleepy other-world, when all, even though not realizing it, would be at one with those who had gone on before them, and perhaps even somewhere deep in their hearts they would be touched by those who were to come. It was how Alec saw it – a vision conjured long since from his deepest thoughts. Usually saw it. Today he was thinking about Sara.
So disturbed had he become over his attraction to her, the lust breeding in him for her, that he had turned to his long-standing mentor. Eugenie Bawden, the glamorous, town-dwelling hostess and long-time widow, who before his first marriage and before her own had been his intended wife. They had remained devoted friends, had become lovers until he’d taken charge of Jonathan. He had consulted her over his feelings for Emilia. Now he needed advice over his desire for the naive young workmaid he should be keeping only a paternal care for.
‘I don’t know what to do, Eugenie!’ he had paced her drawing-room floor like a great threatened beast. ‘I can’t fathom out why I feel like this towards Sara Killigrew. I know I must send her away. But I’m responsible for encouraging the infatuation she’s developed for me. She’s going to feel so hurt and rejected.’
‘Sit down, Alec, you’ll wear yourself out.’ Eugenie, renowned for her wit, benevolence, youthful spirit, chain-smoking and raven-black dyed hair, had pushed him down on the nearest chair, which had taken considerable strength for he had resisted her. Then perching on the embroidered padded arm, she had taken his hand and brushed the tumbling dark hair back from his sweating forehead. She’d lit two cigarettes, hers clasped in a ridiculously long jade holder, and placed his between his lips. ‘Now, dear heart, take a deep breath on this.’
She had held his head in the crook of her arm, stroking his hair, and he had leaned gladly against her breast, somewhat flattened in her chic tubular dress, but he was comfortably aware of the feminine bolstering against his throbbing temple. He smoked and waited. If anyone knew what he should do, it was Eugenie.
Now, while he got out of the bath, rubbed his body rapidly and harshly dry, and dressed in a casual shirt, black tie, trousers and dark sports jacket, and dashed a comb through his thick black locks, he was wording and rewording how to translate Eugenie’s advice into the right approach to Sara, to spare her feelings. And then to Jim, for this involved him too. He would offer them a cottage of their own to live in, to form a distance from Sara. It was the best he could do; he couldn’t bring himself to sack her or find her a new position – what explanation could he give anyway? God, he prayed, please let this come out right.
He nearly let out an oath to find Sara on the other side of the bedroom door. Looking at this shining, tender, provocative young creature he felt a betrayer, and not a little bereft at what his good intentions would deprive him of. She was stunning. Perfect. Matchless. More promising than the clearest sunrise. She smelled of pure woman. And she could be his. The way she was looking at him now, her desire for him was transparent and so blatant it tempted his flesh like nothing ever had before.
He clenched his fists, forced his voice to sound something in the way of normal. ‘Oh, Sara. I thought you’d gone with the others after the milking was over.’
‘I got held up. I thought I could ride with you.’
‘I see.’ Afraid he might lean forward and kiss her and be totally lost, he turned on his heel and headed for the front stairs. She hastened after him and with each step down he fought with himself. He cleared his throat. Angry with himself for now he must be cruel. ‘You shouldn’t take things for granted, Sara. It was silly of you. There won’t be any room in the car. I’m only taking it to pick up some of the elderly and infirm. Mrs Dowling asked for volunteers to collect those who couldn’t cope with being there for the whole event.’
‘Oh, I didn’t know,’ she said, halting halfway down the stairs.
His insides were as crushed as her tiny voice had sounded. ‘I must get on. The boys will be desperate to tell me if they’ve won any of the races. Borrow Mrs Harvey’s bicycle, if you like. I’ll… I’ll see you there.’ He snatched up his hat and was out of the front door, locking it behind him.
Stunned, desolate, Sara slid down on the bottom step of the stairs, hardly believing what had just happened. Since the wonderful afternoon in Long Meadow she had kept introducing herself to him whenever she could, wherever he was, and at times he’d responded to her with interest and pleasure, calling her ‘precious girl’. But she had been blind! Taken for a fool. She had thought the times he had not been warm and friendly were because he was being careful in case someone else was about. She could see now why her unsuccessful pleas about the retaking of the photographs that Mrs Em had suggested had been met with his excuses of being too busy.
One time, to try to get more reaction out of him, she had tried to make him jealous. ‘Wally Eathorne was here not long ago.’
‘Oh, really?’ Alec had frowned. ‘Not a crisis over his mother’s health, I hope.’
‘Wasn’t nothing to do with her.’ She had tried to sound mysterious.
‘I take it then he didn’t want to see me?’
‘No, it was me.’
Alec had stared at her, through jealousy, she had hoped. ‘And?’
‘And nothing.’
He had given a heavy sigh at that. Impatience with Wally Eathorne, she had thought. But she knew better now. It had been impatience with her! He had lost interest in her, interest, even in her inexperience, she was sure had been there. Damn it, he was too much in love with Mrs Em to want love from anyone else. He adored Mrs Em, had been petting her more than usual lately. Sara’s face sunk into her arms. Lately he had referred to Mrs Em as Mrs Harvey, not Emilia, when speaking about her.
On the bottom step Sara stayed and stayed. Steeped in misery, feeling lost, abandoned, foolish. The sun moved more and more to the west and no longer shone through the passage window.
Was Alec, was Mr Harvey – she would call him that from now on and keep her distance – wondering why she had not shown herself at the sports? He might come back and see if she was all right. The thought lifted her wallowing heart. Just for a minute. No, he wouldn’t. His wife and children were there. He didn’t want his servant girl for anything but skivvying.
Damn him. Damn him! How dare he trifle with her! How dare the wretched man set her hopes so high and stamp on them so unfeelingly. He’d want to be rid of her next. Masters were all alike. They didn’t really care about their staff. Jim often reminded her of that. ‘There’s them and there’s us, ’tis the way of things and there’s no good us wishing it otherwise.’
Jim was right when he said, ‘We’ve got to stay on our guard. Always look out for ourselves. Never forget it, Sara.’ Just before he had left for the sports, all spruced up and in a strange, quiet mood, he had looked her straight in the eye. ‘Be nice if we got away from here and had a place of our own, wouldn’t it?’
‘But I’m happy here!’ she had wailed, thinking she would hate her brother if he did anything to upset her dreams.
‘All I’m saying is that it would be nice. Take Druzel Farm, for instance. I’ve been against it before but if you were to consider Wally Eathorne, the farm could be more or less ours one day. Wally and his father are easy-going sorts. We’d fit in all right there. Don’t look like that, Sara. If you married Wally you’d become an Eathorne, and they’ve got standing in the village. Don’t you ever want to be more than next to nothing? ’Cause that’s what we are, and no mistake. Well, I’m going to make something of myself. I’m going to see myself proud, make the buggers round here speak to me with respect, you see if I don’t.’
Sara shot to her feet, ignoring the aches and stiffness of staying crumpled for so long. What had Jim meant? He would never have spoken like that if he didn’t already have something put in motion. He might already have a way out of her terrible predicament, for one thing was certain, she couldn’t bear to go on living and working here.
She seethed aloud, ‘Leave me as next to nothing would you, Alec Harvey? We’ll see about that!’
The dogs out in the yard started up an excited barking, yapping each in their distinctive voice. It wasn’t Jim come back to check up on her, they would not have made a sound. The terriers were not sounding aggressive, so it was someone they knew. There was many a kindly villager who might walk here to see what was holding her up. Or, quite likely, because he had said he was going to ask her to dance with him tonight, it was Wally Eathorne.
Wally Eathorne grinned a little shyly when she opened the back kitchen door to his determined knocking. ‘Jim was getting worried about you, Sara. Me too. Not been taken poorly, have you?’
He was not great in height and with her up on the doorstep their eyes were on the same level. It was different from when she had faced her master in a similar way on the slope in Long Meadow. Wally wasn’t the source of her girlish fantasies and this time she was in charge. She watched him blanch, his ruddy face drop in disappointment at her hard stare until she said, ‘Come in, Wally.’
A glance in the hall mirror on the way here had shown her eyes were tinged red from unshed tears, her cheeks white from fury. ‘I had a headache,’ she said when they were in the kitchen.
‘I’m sorry. Anything I can do for you?’ Wally had taken off his best tweed cap and he was passing it from hand to hand. A more ordinary man would have been hard to find. Wally wasn’t good looking, nor was he ugly. He had the usual sturdy build of a hard-working farmer, the usual wrinkles creasing the corner of his eyes and mouth from constantly grimacing into the wind and rain. Just turned twenty, he was teetotal, likeable, had a joking nature, was clean in his habits and treated his mother with respect. All positive aspects when a girl considered a man as a husband. Sara looked him over in the way Jim had suggested she should.
Under her penetrating gaze, Wally was treading the carpet square under his best boots, risking a viciously scratched ankle if he stepped on one of the sleeping house cats. ‘Have you taken an aspirin?’ he said at last.
‘Yes,’ she replied quickly. ‘I’ll fetch my hat.’
‘You’re coming to the sports then?’
‘Yes. Just give me a minute.’
‘Oh, that’s… that’s…’
She didn’t allow Wally time to make up his mind over his sentiment. She went through to the hall, to the front stairs where she had left her new cloche hat. She used the mirror to set it at the best angle.
Wally Eathorne had an inquisitive streak. He went after Sara and in between giving her admiring glances, peered into the sitting room and the den, the doors left slightly ajar. ‘Grand place.’
‘Do you want to see something really grand?’ she snapped, suddenly furious with Alec again, this time for taking her for granted as a loyal servant.
Wally looked unsure, but straight away he said, ‘All right then.’
‘Follow me.’ She started up the thickly carpeted stairs.
‘Is this all right?’ Wally asked doubtfully, but did as he was bidden anyway.
At the top Sara led the way down the wide corridor to the master bedroom. She pushed open the door, went inside. It was in pristine order, as she had left it that morning, except for where Alec had dumped his work clothes, left his wardrobe door open and carelessly tossed down his comb. The place reeked of his aftershave, a smell she had once found intoxicating. Now she hated it. She had no right to be in here, but she didn’t care! ‘Can you imagine sleeping in a room like this, Wally?’
He whistled through his teeth. Sara noticed he had straight white teeth. ‘Never.’
‘Never?’
‘Well, I… Sara, what’s upset you?’
‘I’m just sick and tired of cleaning and tidying up after others, that’s all!’
She saw herself shaking in rage in the long mirror on the inside of the wardrobe door. Saw Wally come up behind her. Place his rough stocky hands firmly on her shoulders. ‘Sara?’
‘What?’ she asked his resolute reflection.
He spoke in one rapid breath. ‘Marry me, and although I can’t give you all this, I promise I’ll do everything in my power to make Druzel farmhouse a home as grand as possible for you. I’ll build more rooms on to it. Father wouldn’t mind. I’d do anything for you, Sara.’
It was a tempting proposition, but she did not answer. Overwhelmed by all the emotions she had suffered during the last couple of hours, she did not even think for a while. Then she felt Wally’s mouth on her neck, behind her ear, kissing her. Felt his hot breath making her skin tingle. So he wasn’t backward in coming forward, as the older people said about those who quickly reached out for what they wanted.
Wally came round her, put her hands on her face and gazed into her eyes. ‘I think I love you, Sara. You’re the most beautiful, most special girl that ever there was.’
She looked at Wally’s lips. How many times had she looked at Alec’s and longed for him to kiss her. To make love to her, fully, doing everything, and doing it in this very room. She had known she could only have ever been his mistress, but she would have gloried in that distinction. He might have taken her away from here, set her up in a little house somewhere, where they could have loved and dreamed two or three times a week. She had even been prepared to have his children. She looked closer at Wally’s lips. They weren’t full and dark red and sensuous like Alec’s, but they did not repulse her either.
Wally brought his face close and, after hesitating, he kissed her dry, lonely mouth. Comforted by the contact, needing someone, she responded. Wally had courted a girl or two before, so he knew how to kiss. It felt warm and pleasant. And because she had rehearsed what she would do if Alec finally kissed her, she automatically moved her lips under Wally’s and let her body fall against his. With her arms hanging on to him they kissed, rocking slightly, and this brought them into each other ever more intimately.
‘You’re beautiful. I do love you,’ Wally moaned against her mouth, before sliding his lips down over her chin and her neck.
Just as she had done in her fantasies, she crooned back, ‘I love you too.’
‘You do?’ Wally’s head shot up, he looked into her eyes, his own warmly grey and smoky. ‘Oh, Sara, that’s wonderful! This means we’re engaged. Just a minute.’
‘Why?’
He kept hold of her waist while he rummaged in his inside jacket pocket. ‘I was hoping to give you this tonight. Can’t believe I’m actually doing it now. It belonged to mother. She wanted you to have it, if you’d have me. She’s going to be so pleased.’
Sara took the ring he held up between his thumb and forefinger, a diamond solitaire on a decorated gold band. ‘Father had it made specially for her. It’s in perfect condition because she’s only ever worn it on special occasions.’
For a moment Sara thought she was under a spell, which was making her behave foolishly out of character. In a flash of panic she made to push Wally away from her, to order him out of the house, out of her life. Then she saw the great Victorian bed, and remembering Alec didn’t want her on it with him, she decided she knew exactly what she was doing. She gave the ring back to Wally.
‘Don’t you want it?’
‘Put it on for me.’
She felt Wally’s great sigh of relief ripple through her own body. She studied the ring. ‘It’s beautiful.’
Wally kissed her. He turned the kiss into a long, deep happening, in which he explored the sweetness inside her mouth. Then he pounced on her neck, pushing down the soft filmy material of her best dress to taste and kiss her shoulder. Sara felt him unfasten the tiny pearly button at the back of the dress.
Wally began to breathe noisily. He put a hand over her breast. She pushed it off. ‘’Tis all right, isn’t it?’ he breathed against her ear, nibbling the lobe. ‘We’re engaged.’ He made it sound like a wondrous achievement, and for an orphan from the workhouse it was. So she let him put his hand back and keep it there and move it to her other breast.
Somehow they had shifted towards the bed and suddenly they were tumbling down on it. Sara let him keep on kissing her. When his hands strayed, taking the most daring of liberties, she didn’t stop him – instead she shifted her limbs to allow him freer access. For he was a gentle soul, tormenting her slowly, and then quickly, and she was filling up with heat, a heat a hundredfold more intense than what she had conjured up alone, when dreaming, when aspiring, and the maddening heat was burning its way through her and seemed to have a need of its own.
Wally reared over her. Sara lay still but breathing greatly, willing him to progress before the timidity in her, the fear for her self-respect, the fear of consequences, became stronger in force than the desire to have her fiery needs fulfilled.
Wally threw off his jacket, snatched at his bootlaces and wriggled off his boots. He looked down on her. He spent a brief time kissing and touching her then he mounted her. She felt his heavy bones sticking into her. ‘Don’t be afraid.’ His voice came raw and husky.
‘I’m not.’ She wasn’t afraid but she had grown chilled, all desire and mysteries had come to a sickening halt for her and she did not want this now. But she was not going to stop it happening.
She reached up and gripped the brass rails behind her head and took Wally’s weight, his closeness, and the pain of his urgency. He was a little rough, through lack of know-how, she guessed, but he went on instinctively. And instinctively, she moaned and knotted her face, pretending to enjoy the wildness as much as he was. Looking up at the ceiling, then casting her sight downwards and sideways, taking in the opulent satin bedcover, wrinkled and rucked under its illicit use, she didn’t care how long Wally laboured away inside her. This submission was her gift to him.
He fell suddenly and lay on her, panting softly, needing her differently, needing comfort from her, and her forgiveness for hurting and sullying her, and she held his cheek tenderly against her breast.
‘I love you, Sara,’ he gasped, as if in dread and wonder, as if he had discovered some awesome secret. ‘That was, that was…’
‘Yes, it was, Wally. Because we’re in love.’ Of course she didn’t love him, not yet anyway, perhaps she never would, but she would try to, in gratitude for everything he was to give her. She caressed Wally’s commonplace, damp hair and smiled. She had just assured her own and Jim’s future and that was something to be joyful about. Wasn’t it? She was a proper grown-up woman now. She had achieved a measure of freedom and from now on she would strive always to make decisions for herself.
I don’t need counterfeit love from you, Alec Harvey. Mr Harvey! I don’t need your employment and I don’t need your roof.
But behind her smile, urgent tears were building up. ‘I’ll straighten the bed, Wally. I know exactly how it goes. Can you give me a minute?’
Wally placed one last kiss on her hot, moist face, eased himself off her and gathered up his jacket and shoes. ‘I’ll um, I’ll wait for you downstairs, my love.’
After the minute she had asked for, the loneliest minute of her life, Sara saw to the bed then slipped up to her own room to change her dress.