Escape by Moonlight (2 page)

‘So I could, but then I would have been denied the wondrous sight of you.’

‘You should not say such things, sir.’

‘Why not? You are wondrous and I enjoy our little encounters.’ He looked into her face, deciding the rosy blush suited her. ‘Don’t you?’

‘Yes, but—’

‘You see? And do you not agree it is a pity they do not happen more frequently?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘All duty must end sometime,’ he said. ‘Even for you, and you must have some free time.’

‘Only if there are no trains or Pa is able to manage the gates as well as everything else.’

‘What do you do with yourself then?’

‘I read or sew or go shopping in Swaffham or Dereham. Now and again I go to Norwich if Pa wants something we can’t get anywhere else.’

‘And how do you go?’

‘By train, of course.’

‘Of course. Silly me. But do you never go for a walk?’

‘Sometimes of a Sunday after church.’ She wished he wo uld stop quizzing her; he was making her nervous. ‘What do you want to know all that for?’

He smiled. ‘I was just thinking that if we were to meet when you are off duty, by chance of course, whether you would drop the formality and address me by my name.’

‘Mr de Lacey.’

‘I was thinking more on the lines of Jack.’

‘On no, I couldn’t do that.’

They had been hearing the train in the distance for a minute or so, but now its approach grew louder and a moment later it drew into the station and stopped with a hiss of steam, and then they could hear her father’s voice loud above the bang and clatter of doors being opened and boxes of goods being manhandled into and out of the guard’s van. ‘Nayton Halt! Nayton Halt!’

Jack nipped nimbly through the little gate intended for pedestrians when the main gates were shut and set off up the slope of the platform, calling as he went, ‘Think about it, because I shall see you again, you know, and we will talk some more.’ At least that was what she thought he said; it was difficult to be sure when the train was letting off steam and coach doors were banging. His horse was nervous too and she went over to its head to calm it and also in an effort to calm herself.

‘He is arrogant and self-opinionated and he thinks of me as someone to tease,’ she told the beast. ‘But I do not think he means to be unkind, do you?’

Her answer was a whicker of contentment. ‘Yes, I knew you would agree with me. But if he really knew what I thought of him, he would run a mile. He has only to smile
at me and I shiver all over and that is foolish, when I know perfectly well he is only amusing himself.’

She turned her head towards the platform to see Miss Amy de Lacey emerge from one of the carriages. At eighteen, a year younger than Lucy, although you’d never know it to look at her, she was self-assured, had thick reddish hair, which defied all efforts to keep it confined, and a complexion that had the glow of youth made more brilliant by good food and expensive clothes. Before many more years had passed she would be a great beauty and break a dozen hearts.

After leaving finishing school in July, she had spent the summer holiday with friends in Devon, and that morning she had been driven to Liverpool Street station by her hosts’ son, where they had been met by Annie, sent to accompany her the rest of the way home. Annie had been the girls’ nursemaid when they were children and still kept a proprietorial eye on Amy.

Lucy knew Annie quite well. She was only a few years older than her charges and the fount of all knowledge as far as the doings at the big house were concerned. Not that Lucy would ever have repeated any of the gossip which was told to her with a great deal of hushed whispering even when there was no one within earshot, and entreaties to swear never to tell a soul. That was how Lucy had learnt that Jack had been Lady de Lacey’s son before she married his lordship and that his lordship had adopted him. ‘In spite of only being a stepson, he had high hopes of being the heir,’ Annie had said. ‘But when Edmund was born, it put an end to them. Not that he seems to mind, he is good-natured to the point of indolence.’

‘Goodness what a mouthful!’

‘That’s what I heard His Lordship telling Her Ladyship.’

He was kissing his half-sister’s cheek and laughing with her, and then taking the portmanteau from Annie, which just went to show that he was a true gentleman, for many in his position would not even think of helping a servant. And then they were coming down the platform towards her. She left the horse and returned to the crossing because the train was drawing out and the gates would have to be opened again. There was already a brewer’s dray waiting on the other side.

‘Lucy, how are you?’ Amy asked, as they passed each other.

‘Very well, thank you, Miss de Lacey. And you?’

‘Glad to be home.’

Jack put her bag in the gig, helped her and the maid into their seats and then climbed up himself and picked up the reins. He winked at Lucy as he wheeled the horse about and set off back the way he had come.

Her day unaccountably brightened by the encounter, Lucy secured the gates and went back to see to the parcels, two crates of hens, a box of herrings and a large bundle of newspapers which had been disgorged from the guard’s van. The carrier with his horse and cart would soon arrive to deliver the goods about the village. And then there were the takings from the ticket office to be totted up and matched against the tickets that had been issued, the weeding to finish, the flower tubs to water and the platform to sweep; and, in between, the dinner to cook and the washing to be mangled and put on the line. None of it, except perhaps adding up the money, needed much thought and she was free to allow her mind to wander. She had a recurring daydream, a fantasy in which Jack de Lacey held her in his
arms and declared his undying love for her, and explained he was still unmarried at twenty-three because he had been waiting for her to grow up. She imagined being kissed by him, being held and caressed, and then the vision faded because she was not at all sure she should allow him to go any further, even in a dream.

‘Haven’t you finished that yet?’ her father demanded, toiling up the platform pushing a trolley loaded with Miss de Lacey’s luggage which would have to be sent up to the big house on the carrier’s cart. He was thin as a rake and his uniform hung on him as if it were made for someone several sizes larger, which he had been before her mother left and he had never got around to admitting he had shrunk. Nor would he ever have admitted he was a changed man in other ways. He was irritable and never found anything to smile at and he was so demanding he made Lucy’s life a misery. ‘You’ve got your head in the clouds, as usual.’

‘No, Pa, I was thinking about finishing the weeding. I need to keep on top of it.’

‘Well, you can do it later. There isn’t another train for an hour, so you can go indoors and get my dinner now.’

She rose, picked up her basket of weeds, and made her way along the platform to the house. If she were married to Jack de Lacey, there would be no getting of dinners, and even if there were, it would be a pleasure not a chore. For him she would cook beautiful meals and they would eat off the best china and drink wine from crystal glasses. She emptied the weeds onto the compost heap, left the basket, gloves and trowel in an outhouse and went indoors to cook stew and potatoes and jam suet pudding, in an effort to please her father and give him something that would put some weight on him.

Here, in this small cottage full of reminders of her mother, the dreams stopped; here was reality, the day-to-day grind of work in a house where love had died on the day her mother disappeared, perhaps even before that. Pa said she had upped and left them, but Lucy found that hard to believe. Her mother had been sweet and gentle and loving, even in the face of Pa’s unkindness towards her. She had no idea what had caused her to leave and he wouldn’t say. He wouldn’t talk about his wife at all and he forbade Lucy to mention her name. ‘She’s gone,’ he had said the evening Ma was no longer in the house to put her to bed. ‘An’ she ain’t a-comin’ back. And it’s no good you snivellin’,’ he had added, when her lip trembled and tears filled her eyes. ‘We shall just hev to rub along as best we may.’ Over ten years ago that had been and never a word had they heard from her ma since. Sometimes Lucy thought she would leave home and try to trace her, but she had no idea where to start. Besides, her pa would never let her go.

‘Well, how was your holiday?’ Jack asked as they bowled along the familiar lanes, past farms and cottages.

‘Fine. Lazy days walking and swimming and playing tennis.’

‘Did you meet anyone new?’ He turned in at the gates of Nayton Manor, past the hexagonal gatehouse and up the long curving drive lined with chestnut trees.

‘One or two, no one special.’

‘No young men to make your heart beat faster?’

‘Course not. There was only James and he thinks he’s so superior, always teasing me about my hair and tweaking it with his fingers. Belinda’s all right, though.’

‘And how was finishing school?’

‘Boring.’

‘Boring? How can learning to be a lady be boring?’

‘You cannot learn to be a lady. Either you are one or you are not.’

‘Mama might not agree with you.’

‘Mama is different.’

He made no reply to that because both knew their mother was not of aristocratic birth. She was French, her father farmed a few acres in the Haute Savoie, and she had been brought up to do her share of the work, something that real ladies never did. And yet there was no one more ladylike, more diplomatic, or more beloved, especially by her husband. The children knew the tale of how they had met and married and as far as the girls, Elizabeth and Amy, were concerned it was a true love story, but Jack, who had never known his real father, tried to expunge it from his memory. His shameful birth, his feeling that he did not belong, was a chip he carried on his shoulder, though to see him and hear him, you would never know it.

‘I only went to please Papa, you know.’

‘So you were telling the truth when you told Lucy you were glad to be home.’

‘Of course I am.’ She sighed. ‘In some ways, I envy her.’

‘Envy her?’ He ignored the stifled choking sound Annie made. ‘What is there to envy?’

‘I envy her her freedom. She may work if she chooses to. She is not tied by convention.’

‘My dear sis, it is not a question of choosing to work, it is a matter of having to and she is just as tied to convention as you are, surely you can see that? And in the fullness of time she will be expected to marry someone of her own
kind, probably chosen for her by her father …’ He paused a moment, thinking about that and suddenly felt very sorry for poor Lucy Storey.

‘So will I, though that’s not to say I will.’

He laughed. ‘Not ever?’

‘Oh, well perhaps one day, if I meet the right man, but not before I have done something with my life.’

‘Such as?’

‘Earning a living, doing something worthwhile.’

‘Oh dear, not home five minutes and already I can see squalls on the horizon. You know Father will never allow it. And there is no need; everything you want you can have within reason.’

‘Except my independence.’

‘What can you do, anyway?’

‘I don’t know yet. A doctor perhaps, or a lawyer or a politician.’

He smiled. ‘Oh, Amy dear, you will make Papa throw up his hands in horror at the thought. And you aren’t brainy enough in any case.’

‘Thanks for that, brother dear.’ She sighed, realising he was probably right. ‘But if there’s a war …’

‘And that will happen, you may depend on it, but I don’t see how it will affect you.’

‘Of course it will. I could work then, do something useful, perhaps in Papa’s railway business.’

The first Lord de Lacey had been one of the first to recognise the revolution the railways would bring about, and besides involving himself in the construction of the railways, he had built up a large herd on the home farm, whose milk was sent in churns to London in the early hours of every morning, some of it destined to be canned. All these
enterprises needed labourers and supporting industries like horsemen, farriers, harness-makers, basket-makers, shops, breweries and alehouses, carriers to take produce from the farms to the station and railwaymen to run the trains. His son and then his grandson, Amy’s father, had carried on where he left off. When other aristocrats were having to sell their estates because they could not afford to keep them up, nor employ the army of servants needed to run them, he had prospered.

‘Like Lucy?’

‘No, silly, in the offices, like you do. Or you are supposed to do; I haven’t seen much evidence of it. You’d rather live the idle life of a gentleman.’

‘I haven’t yet found my niche.’

‘You are certainly taking your time about it.’

‘Oh, don’t let’s quarrel about it. I have enough of that from Father and Mama. And you will need all your wits about you if you mean to go toe to toe with them over your plans.’

‘I shan’t go toe to toe, I shall be more subtle than that. I’ll get Mama on my side.’

‘She won’t go against Father, you know that.’

‘We’ll see.’

She sat forward to have her first glimpse of the house through the trees. It was a magnificent building, its brick and stone weathered by three hundred years of wind and rain, its rows of windows gleaming in the afternoon sunshine. Whenever she came home from a journey, be it short or long, she breathed in the essence of it; it was almost like meeting a lover after a long absence. It was home and she could not imagine living anywhere else. If she married, she would have to leave it and go wherever her husband
chose to live and he would have to be a very special man to persuade her to that.

He drew up at the front door, which was flung open almost before the wheels had stopped turning, and Annelise de Lacey ran down the front steps to greet her younger daughter, her arms wide, ready to embrace her as she stepped down onto the gravel. It was typical of their mother to forget or ignore her position as his lordship’s wife and allow her exuberance and joy to show. Not for her the stiff hauteur of the born aristocrat.