Secrets and Billionaires

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

LIVIA JUDD awoke from sleep to find the grey light of early morning filtering in between the curtains, revealing the bed where she lay and, on the other pillow, Abel's head, the bald patch concealed by a tasselled nightcap. His mouth was open and he snored slightly, Livia closed her eyes. Abel was good to her, she knew, but she couldn't love him. Last night, for the first time in long-he was undemanding in the frequency of his rights upon her-he'd possessed her body fiercely, avidly, with the kind of brooding protective tenderness he always showed intensified in some way, for some reason. Abel would always have a reason. Perhaps it was to do with the ragged man who'd been in yesterday, and who had talked alone with Abel a long time, in the kitchen after the tavern-part was closed. She'd gone upstairs and left them still talking, and couldn't have told anyone what time the man had left. She hoped he didn't come back; they wanted another kind of customer at the Fleece nowadays.

Livia knew now what had awakened her at this early hour; she'd had a dream, and the dream had reminded her of another life, another young woman whom Abel, for all she was a good wife to him, never knew; a ragged tune ran through the dream, a tune called 'Kenmure' that Gavallan used to whistle often ... What had made her dream now, again, of Gavallan? Dur ing all the years she knew he'd be in a living hell, she herself had thrust him down and out of memory, the way they'd done, she dared say, to his body on the hulks where they changed men slowly into animals. There was nothing she could do for him.

Gavallan, Gavallan.

And he was blind. She'd never seen him like he must have become; like a child, to be led by the hand, fed, guided, super vised, ordered. No doubt now old Max had left him his money, Gavallan would be better looked after than he had been, in the place to which they'd sent him. She hadn't grud ged him the money, even though Abel, she suspected, did, aftercaring for his old father four years like a baby till Max died. Poor Abel; something about him was always unlucky, even the way he'd gone quite bald as a young man. Max had left her, Livia, also, a little bit. "To buy yourself a ribbon, lass," he'd told her at the end, when he was dying; he'd been fond of her. She hadn't bought ribbons, though; she'd set the money aside, to be used, some day, for William. William would be stirring soon; he never lay long abed.

He was as full of life as a small half-broken pony, Livia thought, and did nothing she or Abel bade him. Abel was good to William. Now that the Fleece was showing profits it was herself had helped him there, Abel often told her; the place was clean as a whistle, she and the girl Tib, who'd come to them before Max died, kept it scrubbed and wholesome; travellers could come and be assured of a welcome and a good fire and meal, and no fleas in the beds-now that the inn was acquiring fame, and some money, they should think about sending William to school and a university, perhaps, later, to become a preacher or physician. That was what Abel said, and he meant it kindly, but herself she doubted if they'd ever see William in a pulpit. He was too much Doon's son; might he not end as his father nearly had, at a rope's end; she wouldn't wonder at it.

She opened her eyes again, staring upwards at the gathered folds of the central tester; the bed itself was made of oak. Fine things... she should consider herself lucky, and in ways did so, she the half-gipsy who'd come, weary, pregnant and out of a situation, that night on foot to the inn. Abel had taken her in, as his servant, for the time; next day, she'd started on the floors. The bulk of the coming child made her groan as she scrubbed and sanded, but she'd gone on with it; only, a short while after that, Abel had asked her to marry him. She'd gaped, knowing she wasn't much of a sight, by then, for any man; and he had begun to reason with her, kindly and quietly. It was for the child's sake as well as her own, he said. From the beginning, he'd seemed prepared to take full responsibility for William. This astonished Livia, remembering Governor Priddy in like case; Abel was, she dared say, some kind of saint. In the end, she'd married him.

It was at the bar-counter, where she heard most things afterwards, that Livia had the news of the amended sentence of Gavallan. Before then, she'd thought of him as a dead man, or as good as dead. That they would not now hang him, that they'd be sending him, instead, to Botany Bay, was taken by most of those present to mean mercy and that the magistrate, Sir Hubert Melrose, was kin to him; Livia had her doubts about the former. She knew nothing of Australia, but they wouldn't be sending the men out there if it were a pleasant life, or a free one. She'd carried on serving ale, and said little, and no one said much to her; it wasn't generally known Mor ven had been the father of her child; as a rule, she supposed, folk thought Abel was. By then, William himself, hair already black as the King of Egypt's, was asleep upstairs in his wooden cradle with the maid, the one they'd had before Tib Willcock, rocking it with her foot; he'd been born in bed without any trouble, even choosing a time when the tavern was closed. After Abel had stated quite quietly that the child was his, nothing more, as far as Livia knew, had been said about that; though Abel had no doubt had to square the kirk folk with silver, to avoid the necessity of having to appear with Livia on public repentance-stools. That'd have been a queer state of affairs, if anyone liked; but it hadn't happened, Abel being a warm man and respected in the village. Now, folk respected Livia also.