She reached a hill but didn’t stop, scrambling up the steep path and keeping going until she reached the top, whereupon she gave in to the stitch in her side. Throwing herself down on grass still warm from the heat of the day, she looked up into the sky where the first star was twinkling beside a crescent moon.
She hadn’t run like that in years, not since the time she had left the East End. When she had taken James and Patrick out Tunstall way she had made her brothers laugh sometimes by running up and down hills and around them while they’d clapped their hands and shrieked, infected by her joy of the moment. James and Patrick . . . She sat up, clasping her knees, the joy she’d felt draining away and the old familiar sadness taking its place. She had long since given up any thought of going back to Low Street. Her place was with the Romanies now, with Byron. She owed him her life.
She swallowed hard against the knot of fear that accompanied such thoughts. When she looked into the future she became panicky at what lay before her, but since Byron had spoken she knew deep within there would come a day when she’d have to say yes to him. She didn’t doubt that he loved her and he was kind, handsome too, in his dark swarthy way. As the eldest son of the most powerful family in the community, she was well aware it would be considered a great honour to become his wife.
She plucked a blade of grass, idly chewing at its sweetness and enjoying the warm breeze after the fierce heat of the day.
She had always known deep down that Byron was in love with her, but she had been able to pretend he merely thought of her as a sister before he’d declared himself. Now that comfortable deception was gone, and with its passing she’d had to face up to the fact that she was afraid of him, afraid of his body and what it would do to her when she became his wife. The last few weeks she had been trying to make herself love him as a woman should love a man, but instead even the warm affection and trust she’d always felt for him was dying. Which made her feel doubly wretched. But for him, she would have died curled up in that old tree like a hurt animal; he deserved her undying gratitude. And love. But how could you make yourself want someone in that way? The feeling was either there or it wasn’t, surely?
Sighing, she rose to her feet. She’d have to get back. If Halimena went to bed and found the caravan empty, she’d take great pleasure in raising the camp and causing a fuss, just to put her in a bad light. Oh, she knew Halimena’s little ways sure enough, and it would serve the old woman right if she married her precious grandson and spoiled the purity of the blood. In fact, the thought of Halimena’s outrage and fury at hearing that Byron wanted to marry her was the only bright spot on the horizon.
Telling herself she’d end up as bitter and twisted as Halimena if she wasn’t careful, Pearl began to retrace her footsteps, but slowly. At the bottom of the hill she stood for a minute or two, drinking in the solitude. For some time now she’d felt as restricted as a dog on a short leash, but the other unmarried gypsy girls didn’t seem to mind the limitations their society put on their movements. But that was it in a nutshell, she supposed. She wasn’t a gypsy, not by blood – as Halimena took great pleasure in reminding her at every opportunity.
By the time she reached the lane that led to the campsite at Lot’s Burn, she was walking more swiftly, suddenly anxious to get back before her disappearance was discovered. The fox was barking again, nearer now, the harsh sound jarring on the whispering stillness of the night. Whether it was because she was listening to the fox or thinking about how she would creep into the caravan undetected, Pearl wasn’t sure, but she didn’t hear or see the horse until she jumped over the low stone wall into the lane and landed almost under its hoofs. It reared up on its hind legs, neighing loudly and almost unseating its rider, and Pearl fell backwards in her fright, landing with a jolt on the grass verge.
‘Are you all right?’
The breath had left her body in a whoosh and she couldn’t answer for a moment. The rider had dismounted and coming to where she was, said, ‘Are you hurt?’ as he crouched down in front of her.
Blue eyes met grey. ‘You?’ The voice was deep and without any discernible accent. ‘The girl in the straw bonnet.’
She stared at the man who had featured in her thoughts all afternoon and evening and who was the reason for her earlier restlessness. Pulling herself together, she managed to say, ‘I – I’m sorry. I didn’t see you.’
‘Nor me you. In fact, you seemed to materialise straight from Jet’s hoofs.’
The voice had a touch of laughter in it and it provided the adrenaline needed for Pearl to ignore the hand he held out and scramble to her feet unassisted. The moonlight was very bright, and standing as close to him as she was, she was aware of several things all at once. He was tall and his shoulders were broad under his fine coat; there was a faint smell emanating from him – not exactly perfume but something very pleasant; he was even more handsome than she’d imagined, and there was something else she couldn’t put a name to. It wasn’t frightening and yet it was sending tremors down her spine and reminding her that she was out here alone. Again, she said, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be sorry, I’m just relieved you’ve come to no harm.’ He looked in the direction she had come from. ‘Is there no one with you?’
She shook her head. ‘I was just taking a walk.’
After working in the fields all day? Had she been meeting a secret suitor she didn’t want her family to know about? A local? Ridiculously, Christopher found the idea rankled. His suspicions made his voice stiff when he said, ‘I was led to understand such freedom would be frowned upon in your community. For an unmarried girl, that is,’ he added, as the even more unwelcome thought hit him that she might be married.
‘It is.’ Pearl shrugged her slim shoulders. ‘But I needed some time by myself and it’s such a bonny night.’
‘So there is no lovelorn farm boy waiting in the shadows?’
She looked at him, a straight look, and her voice was as stiff as his had been when she said, ‘I told you, I wanted some time by myself.’
Oh dear, he had offended her. ‘I apologise,’ he said at once. ‘That was presumptuous of me. Will you forgive my impertinence?’
Pearl didn’t answer for a moment, as she wasn’t sure if he was making fun of her. Then she saw he was deadly serious. It flustered her and to her chagrin she knew she was blushing. ‘I must be getting back before I’m missed,’ she said weakly.
‘May I escort you home?’
‘Oh no!’ The words had left her lips before she had time to consider how such a vehement reply sounded. He had been half smiling but now his face was sombre. ‘No one knows I’m out, you see,’ she explained hastily, ‘and if they saw me with you they’d think . . .’ Her voice trailed away. It wasn’t seemly to say what they’d think.
He nodded, and to her relief the smile was back when he said, ‘Then may I suggest I walk you to the bend in the lane before the campsite? None of your family could possibly see us if I leave you there.’
Pearl hesitated. The risk was still there. What if one of the men or some of the lads were out poaching and spotted them?
‘I saw you earlier and I would have liked to speak to you then, but it wasn’t possible,’ he said softly. ‘This opportunity seems heavensent.’
It was a reflection of her own thoughts and the inflection in his voice made her shiver inside. She wasn’t doing anything wrong, she told herself silently. Just by allowing him to walk with her a little way, she wasn’t doing anything wrong.
Again he spoke quietly. ‘I don’t even know your name.’
‘Pearl. Pearl Croft.’
‘And I’m Christopher Armstrong, at your service.’
‘Armstrong? That’s funny, the owner of the country estate where we’re harvesting is . . .’ The penny dropped. This must be a member of the family.
Ignoring this, Christopher said swiftly, ‘Well, now we’ve been formally introduced, so I think it’s quite proper for me to escort you part of the way home. I’ll tell the
horse to tiptoe, how about that?’
His eyes were twinkling and Pearl couldn’t help but smile. ‘He must be very well trained to tiptoe to order.’
‘Absolutely, but then you have no idea how often he and I come across a damsel taking the air late at night.’
Pearl’s smile widened. She was feeling strange – happy, excited, apprehensive. She didn’t really know how to explain it. But from the first moment she had caught sight of him, she had known that this was what she had been hoping for when she’d left the others tonight. And it had happened. She had met him, she was talking to him, and he was walking her down the lane . . .
Chapter 11
Pearl and Christopher didn’t arrange to meet the next night, but when she slipped out of the camp again she knew he would be waiting at the bend in the lane. When she turned the corner he was standing stroking his horse’s muzzle, talking to the beast in a low voice, and for a moment her heart stopped. Then it raced madly as he raised his head and saw her.
She had brushed her hair until it resembled raw silk and changed into a clean blouse, but her old skirt and ugly stout boots she could do nothing about. She had noticed the previous evening how his clothes were of the finest quality and cut, his knee-high leather boots shining and without a mark to blemish the smooth surface. Everything about him was wholesome and fresh. When he’d led the horse the night before, she’d looked at his hand on the reins and his fingernails had been short and spotlessly clean. A gentleman’s hand, one that had probably never done a day’s hard labour in its life. But he couldn’t help what he was born to, she’d chided herself, as though the thought had been a criticism. Which it had, in a way.
‘Hello, Pearl.’
Again the sound of his voice made her shiver inside. She looked into his face. It was slightly flushed and his eyes were bright. ‘Hello,’ she murmured shyly.
‘I was hoping you might decide to take the air again.’
He spoke as though she was a highborn lady strolling around her manicured gardens. A silence ensued between them for a moment, then Christopher unfastened the horse’s reins from a branch of a tree, saying, ‘Shall we walk a little?’
He had thought of nothing but this moment all day. And what course of action he would take if she didn’t come. But she had come. Struggling to keep the elation from sounding in his voice, he said, ‘You were able to escape your fetters once more then?’
He’d spoken lightly but he knew immediately he’d said the wrong thing, even before Pearl replied hotly, ‘If you’re implying I’m a captive then you’re wrong, Mr Armstrong. The gypsies respect their womenfolk, that’s all, and they have good reason for making sure they’re protected when close to the towns. Some folk seem to think gypsies have loose morals and they tar them all with the same brush.’
Her phraseology was interesting. This time Christopher considered his words. ‘Forgive me, but you speak as though you are more of an observer than one of them.’
‘I – I wasn’t born a gypsy, if that’s what you mean.’ So he’d been right. All day he’d been trying to reconcile how she fitted into the Romany community. Her fair skin and blue eyes and slender build was at variance with the sturdy, black-haired individuals he’d seen working in the fields. Carefully, he said, ‘May I ask how you came to join them?’
There was a long pause, the silence broken only by a pair of male blackbirds fighting noisily in the hedgerow, one of which flew away as they approached, with the other hot on its tail.
‘They found me when I was ill and alone and took me in,’ Pearl said quietly.
‘How long ago was that?’
‘I was eleven years old.’ The tone of her voice warned him not to pursue this line of conversation. Restraining his burning curiosity with some difficulty, Christopher acknowledged that he would have to tread carefully if he didn’t want to spoil things. He didn’t qualify in his mind what he meant by ‘things’, he only knew if he frightened her off now he would regret it for the rest of his life.
Casually, he said, ‘They’ve obviously been good to you.’
‘Aye, they have, very good. And kind.’
‘I should imagine you’re someone it would be easy to be kind to.’
‘I don’t know about that.’ She gave him a small smile.
They walked on in the deep twilight until they came to the place where they’d met the night before. Motioning towards the wall with his hand, Christopher said, ‘Shall we sit a while?’ As she nodded, he quickly took off his coat and laid it on top of the dusty stone, saying, ‘There, that should be comfortable enough.’
The simple action brought home to Pearl that he was from a different world, not that she really needed to be reminded of it. She’d been saying the same thing to herself all day long. It had been folly to come tonight; a man of his class would want one thing and one thing only from a gypsy girl. And yet . . . he didn’t seem like that.
Christopher now looked at her and saw she was perturbed in some way. Her earlier comments about how people viewed the gypsies in mind, he said gently, ‘I’m glad you decided to take a walk again tonight. I was hoping we might talk a while.’
‘You – you’re the son of the Mr Armstrong who owns the estate, aren’t you?’ Discreet enquiries under cover of casual conversation out in the fields that day had elicited this information. There were two sons of the present landowner and his lady wife, she’d been told, although one, the younger lad, was away at university down South for a large part of the year.
‘Yes, I am. One of them anyway. I have an older brother, Nathaniel.’
Having tied up his horse, Christopher came and sat down beside her. The faint scent of woodsmoke hung in the still air. The woodman had been felling the straight, eight-year-old chestnut underwood growing at the back of the estate earlier in the day, the grey smoke from his woodfire billowing out into the blue sky. If Byron had been here, Pearl knew he would have skulked around once it was dark to see what he could salvage. Walking sticks cut from chestnut always sold well and took no time to fashion, unlike his carvings. But she didn’t want to think of Byron, not now.
‘I’ve been longing to see you all day.’
Christopher’s quiet confession brought Pearl’s eyes to his. Then she turned her gaze away, looking towards the hedgerow on the other side of the lane, her cheeks pink.
‘Do you mind me talking like this?’ he asked after a moment or two.
‘I – I don’t know. I don’t want you to think–’ She stopped abruptly, not knowing how to continue.
‘I don’t.’ He replied to what she’d been unable to voice. ‘Please believe me when I say this, I only wish for us to be able to get to know each other a little. I wouldn’t harm a hair of your head. You have my word on that.’
His coat was thick and soft, she could feel the beautiful material beneath her hands where they rested either side of her on the wall. She had never felt cloth like this; she had never met anyone like him before. She was trembling inside but not with fear; she somehow knew he was speaking the truth when he said he wouldn’t hurt her. ‘What is your university like?’ she asked.
‘My . . . ?’ He stared at her. ‘Do you really want to know?’
She did. She wanted to know everything about him, starting from when he’d been a little boy and right up to the present day. She didn’t say this though, merely nodding her head.
‘Well, the university is full of men like me whose family don’t really know what else to do with them.’ Then he shook his head. ‘No, that’s not fair. There are plenty of good, intelligent men who are following a worthwhile goal and who will emerge at the end of their education equipped to follow the career of their choice. I envy them, I suppose.’
‘Because you don’t feel like that?’
He shrugged his shoulders, privately amazed he’d told her so much. ‘I’m the younger son. This means my brother inherits and takes over the estate and my father’s business enterprises in due course. Which is all to the good, I might add
. Nathaniel is as ideally suited to this role as I am not.’
Pearl’s brow wrinkled. ‘What will you do then? When you leave the university?’
‘The truthful answer to that is I don’t know.’
Pearl stared at him. It seemed amazing that a young man of his wealth and power had no clear idea about his future. He could do anything, couldn’t he? ‘What would you like to do?’ she asked. ‘If you could choose anything, regardless of your position?’
He smiled. ‘Regardless of my position? I would like to have a bookshop, a dusty little bookshop where people could browse all day long without having to buy anything if they didn’t want to. It would house the works of writers which span centuries, from Anglo-Saxon laments to Tudor husbandry, and from Regency fêtes-champêtres to the modern day. Dickens, Addison, William Blake, Wordsworth . . . Beautiful literature, particularly that which has a powerful feeling for the countryside, as I do. Words paint pictures, you know. Like yesterday. When I saw you in the corn-fields I was reminded of a poem which finishes,
“Speak but one word to me over the corn,
Over the tender, bowed locks of the corn.” That’s how I felt.’
Pearl was entranced. ‘Who wrote the poem?’ she asked a little breathlessly. ‘What was it called?’
‘Summer Dawn by William Morris. He was a poet and novelist and painter.’
‘And you learned about him, about poetry and books at university?’
Christopher nodded. ‘I’m studying for a degree in English Literature.’ He didn’t mention the magnificent library at home, a room which – to his knowledge, at least – his father had never entered and Nathaniel only once or twice.
Born to Trouble Page 13
