Megs jumped up from the bench. “How could Papa do this to us? I know he wanted one of us to be a son, but we’re not to blame for being girls. I can’t believe he could be so thoughtless.” She stamped her booted foot. “If he weren’t already dead and buried, I’d go and get a pistol and shoot him myself.”
“If any of us should have been a boy,” Melissa put in. “It should have been you. You’re quite violent enough to have been one.”
Megs’ expression betrayed the fact she saw this as praise.
“No, you wouldn’t shoot him,” Miriam said. “You’d go and tell him to stop being such an ass and remember he has three daughters who no one will want to marry if they don’t have dowries.”
This made Melissa snort. “Well, I don’t want to marry anyone, so not having a dowry will suit me fine. But I do want to keep Apollo and not have some stranger steal him for himself, or for his wife or, even worse, for his child who is bound to be spoiled. Mama, we simply must keep the horses. I refuse to let anyone else ever ride Apollo. He would hate that.”
“We may not be able to stop him,” Miriam said. “After all, he’ll have the law on his side.”
“If he tries to steal our horses I shall hate him forever,” Megs snapped. “Only a monster would do that. And I’m quite certain he’s a monster even though I’ve never met him. Perhaps it’s him I should shoot.” She gave a decisive nod. “Yes, that would be the answer to everything.”
Miranda sighed, reflecting on what a good thing it was that she had Geoffrey’s guns all locked up in the gun room where Megs couldn’t get at them. “Please try to stop being so violent, Megs. I promise we will keep the horses, whatever it takes. But more importantly, we have to prepare our new home for us, and our horses, before he gets here. I really don’t want to have to welcome him to Windrush as though I were happy to see him. I want us to be out of there before he arrives.”
Melissa scowled. “I don’t want to have to be nice to him either.But where are we supposed to go? The farmhouse is quite uninhabitable. We went and looked a few days ago. Just in case. It’s full of huge cobwebs.”
Plastering fake confidence across her face, Miranda patted Melissa’s hand. “Nonsense. We shall be perfectly fine there. It will take just a little work to make it into a cosy new home for us.”
Her three daughters stared at her, each with a differing reaction.
Melissa wrinkled her dainty nose. “But no one’s lived there for years.”
Miriam frowned. “I’ve been thinking it’s awfully close to the house. He’d see us there, and what’s worse, we’d keep seeing him. In our house.”
Megs bounced up and down some more. “I think it would be perfect. It has stables for our horses, and I’ve explored the house with Arthur the boot boy, and it would be a big adventure to go and live in it.” She shot a disparagingly scornful glance at her sisters. “I, for one, want to go and live there. Can we go today?”
“Couldn’t we wait until the heir arrives in case he’s a nice person who’ll let us stay in the house still?” Melissa asked, doubt in her voice. She was not a girl fond of the sort of spiders who’d made those cobwebs, and which they would be bound to encounter if they moved to Rampton Farm.
Megs, her shock at their father having left them nothing now worn off, pounced. “We’ll have to clean it first I suppose, and there’ll be simply lots and lots—hundreds or thousands I think—of spiders just waiting to get in your hair, Lissy.”
Melissa leaned around her mother and swiped a hand at her sister.
Miranda, determined to hide her own unhappiness, separated them with a firm smile. “Melissa, do not forget that it’s for you to set an example to your sisters and fighting while we are in extremis does not become you.”
Megs stuck her tongue out.
“And as for you, Margaret, you must learn to behave like a young lady, not like a hoyden.”
“If we don’t have dowries we’ll never become ladies,” Megs pointed out. “Nobody will ever want to marry us. We’ll be able to live at Rampton Farm with our horses and do just what we want. Even if what we want is to be hoydens.”
“Nothing will be able to stop you being a hoyden,” Melissa snapped. “You were born one.”
Miriam held up a hand. She might not be the oldest of the three, but she was by far the most sensible of them. “Please stop it, you two. This isn’t helping Mama one bit. She has to think of how the four of us are going to live, and all you can do is fight and call each other names.” She paused. “We have to all behave like grownups now and help Mama. And if she says we’re to go and live in Rampton Farm, then that is what we shall do. Spiders or not.” She glared at Megs, who pressed her lips together and stayed silent. Perhaps suitably cowed, but probably not.
Thank goodness for sensible Miriam. Miranda reached out and took her middle daughter’s hand. “Wise words, as usual. And I think the first thing we must do is walk down and take a look at the farmhouse together. As a family.” She’d been putting off so doing for weeks now, ever hopeful her situation would not deteriorate that far.
“Can we ride down?” Megs asked, already back to her usual self. “I’ll have to put my bridle back together, but it won’t take me long.”
Miranda shook her head. “No. We’ll walk. It’ll do us all good. It’s less than a mile and the sun is shining.” She stood up. “We’ll go now.”
Rampton Farm hadbeen tenanted until four years ago by Mr. and Mrs. Fisher, the grandparents of young Arthur the boot boy and his older brother Dick who worked in the gardens. When old Mr. Fisher had dropped dead while walking behind the plough in his bottom field, his wife had professed herself unable, due to her rheumatics andhaving no adult son left to her, to continue farming and had moved into a small cottage in the village with her daughter-in-law, the widowed mother of Arthur and Dick.
Miranda remembered Geoffrey saying on numerous occasions that he’d have to find a new tenant for the farm, but he’d never quite got round to it, and then a death not unlike Mr. Fisher’s had taken him unawares. And so the farm had stood empty for the last four years, occasionally explored by not just curious children like Megs and Arthur, but sometimes by passing itinerants who needed shelter for the night. Until now, Miranda herself had only seen it from a distance, while out riding.
It stood at the end of a bumpy gravelled lane which had grass down the center, overgrown hedgerows, and a lot of trees with dangerously low-hanging branches. Access was via a broken-hinged gate into a weed-infested yard that had once, a long time since, been gravelled like the lane, but now seemed to be just dried mud. To the right stood a long row of open-fronted storage buildings that still contained a hay cart with very little paint to its name, a rusty wurzel chopper and an old pony trap a few tatty chickens had turned into a handy, and guano festooned, roost. To the left, a row of buildings offered accommodation to livestock—ideally cattle, but, at a pinch, horses. Not quite like the stables at Windrush whatever Megs said, but at least usable.
The house faced the gate and was one of those mellow, sandstone buildings common to the area, with a solid-looking roof of Collyweston stone slates and a low porch in the center of its front face. It had a somewhat furtive look to it, and appeared to be crouching under the shelter of a couple of large chestnut trees, hoping no one would notice it was part of the farmyard.
