Abbeyford Inheritance (19 page)

Trotter shook his head slowly.

Adelina sighed in mock regret and turned away. “Well, I'm sorry, I don't believe the horse worth that much.” She began to walk away, though her heart was pounding in case Trotter was tougher than she had imagined and would not yield.

But she had not misjudged his kind. “Hey, wait a minute. All right – ninety – and that's my very last offer.”

Adelina whirled round. “It's a deal!” she cried.

“Where do you want the horse taking?”

“To the stables. You know where they are.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

Mrs Wallis Trent on her white stallion soon became a familiar figure in the countryside surrounding Abbeyford. The stallion – which she named Zeus – was wild and unmanageable with anyone else, but with Adelina the animal behaved perfectly. He was her horse and hers alone. She joined the Hunt whenever it rode to hounds, and almost daily she went riding, sometimes alone, sometimes with Squire Trent and occasionally – very occasionally – with her husband.

There were two places Adelina never ventured – the abbey ruins and Lynwood Hall. Though in her heart she longed to see Lynwood again, she knew there was no turning back. He did not want her – he had made that clear. Now she was Wallis's wife and Lynwood thought all his jealous beliefs had been true.

Her greatest joy was to take her daughter and her stepson to visit Lord Royston. Here, in the disused nursery, she found a happiness and contentment she had only known in her early childhood – dim and distant memories brought to life again by two small children. And for Lord Royston, too, his days were filled with love and companionship once more.

Adelina visited the Vicarage often and, ironically, there grew between her and Sarah Smithson an uneasy friendship. It seemed as if Adelina was a tangible link between the two people who had loved each other so many years ago, who had been forced to live out their lives so close to each other and yet worlds apart.

One morning, when Adelina found herself alone with Sarah in the kitchen at the Vicarage, she said, “Squire Trent was asking after you yesterday, Sarah.”

Sarah dropped the cup she was holding, the crash of shattering china resounding in the silent kitchen. For the first time since she had known her Adelina could see a spark in the woman's weary eyes.

“Guy? He – asked after – me?” she whispered, the words almost like a prayer of thankfulness.

Adelina felt a lump in her throat and could not stop her thoughts straying to her own lost love – Lynwood. “ Yes – yes, he wanted to know how you were and if you like being here, at the Vicarage.”

Sarah sat down at the bare, scrubbed table and folded her hands together, her eyes gazing ahead, as if instead of the kitchen about her she was seeing pictures from the past. A rare, faint smile curved her mouth. Adelina watched her, then she sat down opposite her at the table.

“Maybe I was wrong – all those years ago,” Sarah began, almost more to herself than to Adelina. “Maybe he did love me enough. I thought, you see, that I was just another village girl to him. And then – when I – found I was with child my family were so angry – so angry. They wouldna let me even see Guy again. We weren't allowed to sort things out for oursel's. I was weak, I know, and I disappointed him. Oh, I believe he'd have stood up to his parents if I'd been strong too. But I thought – that, in years to come, he'd blame me. I thought it better that we married our own kind. And then,” her eyes clouded and her fingers twisted nervously. “ Then someone attacked Guy – in the wood – left him for dead.”

Adelina gasped but said nothing and waited for Sarah to, continue. “Sir Matthew – Guy's father – arrested my pa and sent him to gaol. He died there of gaol fever,” she finished flatly.

“However could he do that?”

“He was magistrate for this district,” she said, and the way in which she said it told Adelina that the ordinary peasant folk had been powerless under his tyranny.

“By the time – Guy recovered, I was married to Henry Smithson,” Sarah was saying. “He's carried his bitterness agen Guy all these years and reared Evan to hate his own father.” Sarah shook her head sadly and her shoulders sagged even more as if she carried the whole burden of guilt. “He'll not rest till he's brought trouble to the Trents.”

“Did Guy Trent manage the estate before Wallis?” Adelina asked gently.

“Not really. His father, Sir Matthew, lived to be quite an old man and was active up to the last. Wallis was almost a young man when his grandfather died and he seemed to take over straight away. Guy never really held the reins at all. Perhaps it would have been better if he had.”

“How do you mean?”.

Sarah looked directly at Adelina. “Maybe I shouldna be saying such things to you, ma'am, but you've been kind to me, and I'm grateful and – and I think you like Guy.”

Adelina nodded. “I'm very fond of him – yes.”

“And your husband, ma'am?” Sarah asked quietly.

“I can't understand him, Sarah.” Adelina raised her shoulders slightly. “He seems so …” She paused searching for the right word, but Sarah supplied it. “ Cold, hard, ruthless?”

Adelina sighed. “I'm afraid so.”

Sarah nodded. “The resentment against him in the village is growing, ma'am, and I canna do anything to prevent it.”

“Why do they dislike him so?”

“He's a hard man. The wages he pays us are poor. He never repairs the cottages he owns. An' then there's this Corn Law. Oh, I don't understand it all – it all has to do wi' politics. All I know is, the workers are worse off for't.”

“May I come and see the cottages for myself?” Adelina asked.

There was fear immediately in Sarah's eyes. “I don't know about that, ma'am. If Henry knew I was even talkin' to you like this, he'd – he'd half kill me!”

“Some time when he's not there, then?”

“Well …” Sarah was still reluctant, but a week later Adelina visited Sarah's tiny cottage.

As she entered she felt immediately closed in by the smallness, the darkness and the overpowering dankness. The hard beaten-earth floor, covered with rush mats, was cold and damp, the walls were rough and cracked. Two window panes were broken.

“What's that rustling in the roof?” Adelina asked.

“Rats!”

Adelina's mouth compressed. It was not that she had never seen such conditions before – indeed, on occasions when her father's debts had plunged them into abject poverty, she had had to suffer such hardship herself. But that she should find it here, in a village where the workmen should have been cared for by their employer, shocked and angered her.

“Sarah,” Adelina faced her, “I don't blame the villagers for how they feel, in fact – I can't promise anything, but …”

At that moment the low door creaked open and Henry Smithson stood there. Adelina heard Sarah's gasp and could feel the woman's fear.

“Good afternoon, Mr Smithson,” Adelina said swiftly. “ I …”

“What are you doin' here?”

“I came to bring your wife her wages.” Adelina opened her reticule, thankful that she had had the foresight to have an excuse ready. She placed the coins on the rough table. She smiled at the glowering man. “ I am sorry to intrude upon you, but I missed Mrs Smithson at the Vicarage earlier.”

“Oh. I see.” He looked as if he did not believe her, but there was nothing he could do.

Adelina turned to Sarah. “Thank you, Mrs Smithson, for all you're doing for my relatives. I do appreciate it and I'll see you are rewarded.”

As she left the cottage she heard Henry Smithson's voice rise. “Rewarded, is it? Pah! We know what their promises are, don't we? Looked after you, didn't they? Left me to bring up their bastard …”

Adelina walked away, sorry to have brought his wrath upon Sarah's head, but she guessed that the poor woman was used to it anyway.

As Adelina left the village and walked up the lane towards the Manor, she heard hoofbeats behind her, and turned to see Wallis approaching. He reined in close beside her, causing her to step back to avoid Jupiter's restive hooves.

“Where the devil have you been?” Wallis shouted, glaring down at her.

“To the village,” Adelina replied, calmly determined not to be intimidated by him.

“You have no business there. I saw you coming out of one of the cottages. What were you doing?”

“I've been to pay Sarah Smithson her wages, that's all,” she lied glibly, using the same excuse she'd given Sarah's husband.

Wallis leaned down towards her. “You'll keep away from the village folk. Do you hear me?”

Adelina gasped at his arrogance. Defiantly, she remained silent.

“Do you hear me, Adelina?” he shouted.

“I hear you, Wallis,” Adelina replied quietly. “But by what right do you order me as to whom I may visit?”

“As your
husband
!”

They glared at each other, for the first time since their strange marriage had begun, openly hostile.

“I don't think much of the way you treat your employees. They are living in squalor.”

“Keep out of my affairs,” Wallis warned her.

“It is my affair. They're my grandfather's lands.”

“At the moment, maybe. But not for ever, my dear, not for ever. One way or another, they will be mine one day!”

He kicked his heels and Jupiter leapt forward, the horse's hooves narrowly missing Adelina.

She gazed after Wallis as he galloped away.

“How could I have been so foolish – even for Francesca's sake?” she murmured to herself and a picture of herself in twenty or thirty years' time – remarkably like Sarah Smithson – flashed before her mind's eye.

Adelina shuddered, pulled her cloak around her and hurried home to see the children.

It was just over two months after their marriage that the villagers' open hostility towards Wallis Trent became more ominous.

A wild dog, or, as Wallis thought, probably two, got in among the in-lamb ewes, causing havoc. The dog, or dogs, ravaged and killed several sheep and chased others or frightened them so that quite a few aborted stillborn lambs. The slaughter was terrible to see. Adelina rode out on Zeus to the fields beyond the abbey ruins where the incident had occurred. There were six ewes dead, their bodies mutilated, their thick wool drenched with their own blood. Tiny lambs, which had never had time to draw breath, lay upon the ground, mere bundles of bones. Several other ewes were obviously very sick and did not look as though they would survive.

Adelina, unseen by him, watched Wallis sitting astride Jupiter, motionless as a stone statue, looking upon the carnage with a grim face. Beneath his arm he carried a shotgun.

Adelina urged Zeus closer until she stood beside him. “ What has caused this, Wallis? Foxes?”

“I suppose it could be – but I rather think it's a wild dog or – more likely – two. They roam and hunt in pairs.”

“Have you seen the dogs?”

“No, but I intend to find them. Now you're here perhaps you'd better come too. Just to see what lengths your village friends will go to!”

He turned his horse away from the awful scene and Adelina followed him. She wanted to learn the truth as much as he did, though for a different reason. At walking pace, they rode side by side so that they might talk.

“The men look even more sullen than usual, Wallis. Are they upset by what has happened?”

“I doubt it,” he said shortly. “ Not one of them seems shocked by what has occurred. It was as if they'd known it was going to happen.”

Adelina gasped. “ You don't mean – you can't mean they've planned it? That they've done it on purpose?”

Wallis nodded, his expression hard. “ They'll rue the day they tried to tangle with me,” he muttered, harshly, more to himself than to her. His eyes, as he watched his workmen clearing away the carcasses, were bright with malice. That anyone – particularly anyone he considered his inferior – should dare to raise his hand against his master was beyond Wallis Trent's arrogant understanding.

His words brought a chill to her heart.

Adelina said nothing but rode in thoughtful silence.

At a steady canter they rode northwards away from Abbeyford. Behind them lay the Royston farmlands, in front, rolling countryside with scarcely a farm or a cottage in sight.

“Do you farm all these fields, Wallis?”

He pointed with his riding crop. “ These directly north and east are your grandfather's lands. Over the hill to the west are Lynwood's.”

They rode on, still going northwards. The ground was frozen hard, but there had been no snow as yet. The day was bright but bitterly cold and though Adelina was warmly dressed, she still shivered.

“Wallis, I'm cold. Let's gallop to warm ourselves.” She spurred Zeus and he leapt forward, his restless energy responding eagerly. Jupiter, not to be outdone, thundered alongside. The sharp air stung her face, but Adelina found the ride exhilarating. Across the meadows they galloped, jumping low stone walls, steadying to a canter to thread their way through a copse, rustling through the dead leaves of autumn, then out into the open fields again, with flying hooves.

At last Adelina pulled her white stallion to a steady trot. Her cheeks were rosy, her eyes bright, but Wallis did not notice.

Still frowning, he said, “ There's no sign of any dogs here. We'd better turn back now.”

They rode back towards Abbeyford in silence. As they crested the hill overlooking the village, they reined in and stood surveying the valley below them. The dead sheep had been removed, but there were still visible signs of the slaughter. Tufts of bloodstained wool and pieces of flesh littered the field.

Adelina said, “Where would wild dogs go in the daytime? Where would they hide out?” She watched Wallis as his eyes roamed over the valley, the fields and the hillsides. She saw his gaze come to rest upon the abbey ruins. Without another word needing to be spoken between them, they both turned their horses towards the abbey.