Free The Favoured Child by Philippa Gregory Page A

and said that I should not love him, not ever, not ever again. That we should not even be friends. He had bullied me long enough. This wicked attack would be the last time he would ever make me cry.
    The hay scratched my cheek and grew hot and damp while I wept my heart out into its tickly dryness…and then I felt the sweetest touch in all the world – Richard’s hand upon my shaking shoulder.
    He pulled me up, gently, oh, so gently, and he turned me around towards him. Oh, little Julia,’ he said in a voice of such tenderness and pity; then he cupped his hands either side of my cheeks and kissed every inch of my wet flushed face, so that my cheeks were dried with his kisses.
    And I sobbed again and said, ‘Richard, you should not treat me so!’ I could hardly get the words out. ‘You should not, Richard! I will not love you if you bully me like that. You are wrong to treat me so, Richard.’
    ‘I know,’ he said remorsefully. ‘I know I should not do it. But, Julia, you
must
forgive me. You know I do not mean any harm. It is just an accident.’
    ‘An accident!’ I exclaimed. ‘Richard, that was no accident! You beat me as hard as you could! Three blows! Not even my own mama has ever beaten me like that! And you said you would kill me!’
    ‘I know,’ he said again, his voice warm with his charm. Richard’s easy charm. ‘I beg your pardon, Julia, and I swear I will never hurt you again.’ He knelt beside me on the straw. ‘Look!’ he said. ‘I am on my knees to you, begging you to forgive me.’
    I hesitated. The pain was fading and Richard’s appealing, worried face was too much for me.

    ‘Say you forgive me!’ he entreated in a low whisper, his arms out to me.
    ‘I won’t,’ I said sullenly. ‘You are cruel, Richard, and I had done nothing but sit on her in the stable.’
    He was silent at that for a moment, still kneeling at my feet. ‘A true lady accepts an apology,’ he observed. ‘I have said that I am sorry, Julia. And I
am
sorry. I am offering you an apology.’
    My mama’s training, the lessons of my grandmama, the world we lived in and my own loving heart were too much for my sense of grievance. ‘Oh, Richard, all right!’ I said and I burst into tears afresh for no reason at all and he threw his arms around me and hugged me and kissed my wet cheeks and dried my eyes on his own white linen handkerchief.
    We sat in silence then, in the shadowy hayloft, while the night air grew colder and the first pinpricks of stars came out like sparkles of frost in the autumn sky. And Richard said softly, reasonably, ‘I just don’t like people taking my things, Julia.’
    And I had said – for in a way it
was
all my fault – ‘I know you do not, Richard. And I promise I will never sit on Scheherazade again.’
    I would have promised more, but a slim new moon came out from behind a wisp of dark cloud and its light shone in my eyes, and I heard a sweet high singing which I always think of as the music of the very heart of Wideacre, which used to ring through Richard’s voice. This night it was not thin and peaceful, but somehow ominous. For some reason, I did not know why, it seemed like a warning, as if the moon were telling me that Richard’s expectations and Richard’s need to own things outright were not good qualities in a young boy, that I should not concede everything to him.
    Then the moment passed, and I was just a tearful girl in a hayloft with a loving bullying playmate.
    ‘Master Richard don’t like you to even touch his horse, then?’ Dench said curiously.
    ‘No,’ I said, coming out of my reverie. I had not touched Scheherazade again, and Richard had forgotten his anger. Hehad taken to riding every day after that evening, and I had seen little of him.
    ‘Dog i’ the manger,’ said Dench briefly. ‘I reckon you’d ride well enough without teaching, Miss Julia. You’re the true-bred Lacey, after all.’
    ‘No,’ I said. I sat straighter on the seat beside Dench.