your childhood grudges now. You are not yet too fine a lady to escape my censure.’
Now it was my turn to blush, with mortification. Mother was right to reprove me. It had been childish of me to take impulsive revenge and I was ashamed.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said reluctantly, ‘I’ll speak to Robert but I can promise nothing.’
Anna looked at me with her pale blue eyes. There was something disturbing in their very blankness. I knew then that she had hated asking me for anything and that having heard my response she hated me all the more. The air in the solar suddenly felt stiflingly humid, as though her dislike was a palpable thing, smothering me. I stood up abruptly.
‘Let us walk,’ I said. ‘We have no flower gardens here but the herb beds are pretty at this time of year.’
Mother was all eagerness, shepherding Anna out ahead of her, chattering about the demands of running a household. There was little I could contribute to the conversation; I had always intended to take up the reins of household management but I had servants to organise everything for me now and whenever I told Robert I felt I should do more, he just laughed indulgently. ‘Why would you wish to dirty your hands in the pantry or make tinctures in the stillroom?’ he would say. ‘You are a fine lady now.’
I might have said that I wished it because I was bored, because I wanted to have a purpose and to be more than merely Mistress Dudley but I never did. How could I complain of my lot when so much good fortune was mine? Besides, things would be different when I had a child.
‘It is good to have you close by, Amy,’ Mother said, squeezing my hand. She waited for Anna to echo the sentiment but my sister stopped instead to breathe in the scent of a briar rose growing against the barn wall, and pretended not to hear. Mother sighed.
‘I hope,’ she continued, ‘that we will see you at Stansfield Manor – and perhaps even at Sawston?’
I doubted that Robert would ever consent to visit Antony and Anna, and given that she had not invited us – anyway I thought it wise to give a politician’s answer and a polite smile.
‘Perhaps,’ I said.
‘Anna is expecting a child,’ Mother said, almost desperately. ‘Perhaps you will stand sponsor to it?’
My eyes met Anna’s in a moment of surprising unity. Both of us deplored Mother’s attempts to make us like each other more than we were able. At a distance it was entirely possible; we wrote politely to one another but had no desire to be more intimate. Thus it was sometimes with siblings. I loved Arthur but I could not love Anna.
‘I congratulate you,’ I said to my sister, suppressing a stab of envy. Robert and I had been wed a year now and I had not yet conceived.
Anna cast down her gaze. ‘It is early days yet. I pray this one will go full term.’
‘Amen to that.’ On such a subject we could be in easy agreement, knowing how infinitely dangerous and difficult such matters could be.
‘You should not ride back,’ I said impulsively. ‘It cannot be good for you. Take our carriage.’
Mother looked gratified but Anna shook her head. ‘The roads are too bad,’ she said. ‘I’d rather ride.’
I was still feeling affronted that night as Robert and I lay in bed together. I told him of the visit and complained how little Anna liked me. ‘Darling Amy,’ Robert said, pulling the neck of my nightgown down, kissing my bare shoulder, ‘how could anyone dislike you? Your sister is but sour and ugly and envious. Pay no heed.’
I giggled. ‘Robert,’ I said, playfully pushing away his hands to encourage him all the more, ‘Anna is with child. Now for that I do envy her.’
Robert laughed. ‘There’s an easy remedy for that, sweetheart,’ he said. He rolled me beneath him. ‘We try…’ His lips brushed my ear, then moved down the line of my throat, ‘and if at first we do not succeed, we keep trying. How does that suit you?’
‘It suits me well,’ I admitted.
Robert’s hands were moving over my body now and my skin was damp and my heart was pounding with the pleasure of it. I forgot everything. I forgot about Anna. I forgot to ask for the favour for Antony Huddleston. I never thought on it again.