Inheritance Feud

Chapter 3

Chapter Three

Mama was too meek to demur. In any case she'd once been betrothed to Uncle Richard herself, when he was heir of Baron, and had only been married to Papa some years afterwards, when Theon was already a mother less small boy living with his uncle. 

It was to find a mother for Theon that Papa had in fact married, in the end; and who better than the young woman who should have been Richard's wife? Theon's own wild Highland mother was by then long dead; she hadn't survived his birth at Baron. It was Hermione's own mother, gentle, inconsiderable Grace Melrose, who had brought them both up as her own till she died of phthisis when Hermione was five.

"I can just remember Mama," Hermione thought. Odd to think that she, with her smooth fair hair and gracious, placid smile, should have loved Uncle Richard always despite his betrayal, and wept at his exile and refused to marry anyone for a long time, only she had been prevailed upon, at last, to marry Papa. Young women were not consulted about their wishes; one might as well be a parcel of French lace. 

After Mama died Uncle Sandor Melrose had offered to take and bring up Hermione with his own son Peter at Maddon, but Papa wouldn't agree; then again on Papa's death Uncle Sandor had been expected to offer, but this time had not. "No doubt he was afraid you'd beguile Peter or even little Paul, and you with no dowry to speak of," Theon had said unkindly, when he heard. That had been during the last days when she herself could still see and talk to Theon; the last time he had the chance to be cruel.

He had often been cruel. Sometimes she was sure he hated her.

She stayed resolutely in her place, not risking the spidery exit from the arbour. It made it easier not to answer Theon's summons now if she remembered certain aspects of their youth together. Hermione was not a jealous creature; in her heart she had always worshipped the cousin Papa loved so much more than he ever loved herself. 

This had been the case since long before the time when Theon, six years older, rode a large pony and she a small; since he'd taught her to play cricket, then mocked unkindly at the sight of her short, childish legs endeavouring to make the runs in spite of ham pering petticoats, so that she stopped and cried. Later there had been the time, worst of all, when he'd dared her to climb out of the high turret-window of Baron, easing her way along to the narrow ledge below the roof, where the ghost of Susannah Doon, her own great-grandmother, was said for some reason to walk. 

This however happened in daylight, and there was no sign of the ghost who walked presumably under the moon; but halfway along she, Hermione, had stuck, and grew frightened and, mistakenly, looked down. The ground below had seemed far off, green and swaying like the endless sea beyond; hens pecked about nearby like flies, and Mor ven's upturned face among them was pale, narrow, and expec tant, a new moon in reverse. 

.She'd known then what she should have known at the beginning; that he wanted her to fall. He wanted it, because Baron was hers and could never be his. He wanted to kill her, for revenge, or whatever it was. He wanted

"Cry-baby! Cry-baby Hermione!" His mocking call had floated up from below, like a gull's from sea-rock; but the mockery reassured her, for it was customary to Theon, and she knew he meant to make her angry enough to forget her fear. 

But the height of the ledge, the merging of green land and greener water, the breakers in the distance white like the hens at their feet, made her sick with terror; she couldn't move either back or forth; her fingers gripped the ledge helplessly. Clearly now, after all this time, she could still recall the tiny, star-shaped flecks and patches of lichen, golden in colour, which inhabited the roof and walls, and their rough dry feel against her clinging, useless fingers. Below her, Theon had begun to call again.

"Jump, and I'll catch you. I will, I promise. I'll catch you so's you don't fall." But one could never believe him; the voice had changed, was loving now and trying to help her, to save her perhaps, but she couldn't take the leap…

Luckily Sam Aitken the groom had come along, and had seen what was happening. He'd climbed up and rescued Anna bel, and got her down. Later, she was told, he'd aimed a cuff at Theon, which in those days was like slapping the face of the king in council. But Aitkens had worked in Baron stables for three generations and Sam could risk Papa's anger, which never in any case showed itself on that occasion; after all, Sam had saved Papa's only daughter. Then, shortly after that, as it seemed, Papa had died.

And so she would not go to Theon now, just because he was whistling, and kilt up her skirts and run through the long grass uphill, and risk aunt Galadriel's whipping though she was now too old for it, and sit by Theon again among the springing mosses and the white pricking of garlic flowers that gave out so beguiling a scent in the summer woods that it wasn't like their relative, the tamed cookery-herb, at all. She wouldn't go … and what did he want with her? He hadn't come near, or sent a birthday-remembrance or any other word for a long time. It was as though, now Baron was gone, she herself meant nothing to him.

More than anything in the world, though, she would like to go. If he whistled again…

Her head stayed c****d like a bright-eyed thrush's, listening. But there was silence now from the hill. It was almost as though he'd known what she was thinking, and given her time to go over it all and change her mind, then stopped just in time to torment her. Theon was like that.

Theon Doon, lying up in the spinney, had himself shed the mood which had led him to try and summon his young cousin today. He'd known she would not come, any more than a little wax doll would propel itself, on jerky, uncertain limbs, across the field. His feeling for Hermione remained as it always had; a mixture of affection, resentment and a certain deep abiding envy and hatred, the latter on behalf of Baron. He had always felt this, even in the days when Uncle Philip complacently assumed he could right the wrong by marrying Theon to his cousin, later. Uncle Philip had died too soon.

Theon himself was light-eyed and slim, a youth still, with a thatch of silky-brown hair not always confined with a rib bon, he had a fey, pallid, moonlit beauty. He stared now at Baron's tall chimneys, seen beyond the geans in their silvery summer leaf; farther off was the sea.