Inheritance Feud

Chapter 6

Chapter Six

Doon of Baron! There was no man must tell him what he should do. He would do his will. He'd get back the house... somehow, anyhow, Silly Hermione, the wax doll in a sun bonnet-he'd seen her last year, following aunt Galadriel about with a flat basket, while the old woman snipped off rose-heads with scissors-Hermione should have bred his heirs. If she should breed them now instead to some rich man aunt Ret ford found, and they peopled Baron, like Bart's bastards peopled the farms... A nucleus of an idea, ruthless and cruel, sprang to Theon's

mind at that moment. He was not yet certain of the details of it. But it had come; and as he thought best after activity he rose, jerked his coat across his shoulders from where he had slung it meantime over a branch, and strode down again to the road which led toward's Aaron's. Peter Melrose's horse would be shod by now and if so, before they set off tomorrow night, he'd ride it over to Maddon. Peter was one of the few people who still acted in a friendly manner since the closing of Baron, and Theon's choosing of the blacksmith and his son for company. It would be pleasant to see Peter again and talk as they had been used to do while Philip Doon still lived.

The sun had gone by the time Theon descended from the hill. There was, by now, no sign of Hermione in the Mains garden. No doubt she was in the withdrawing-room, drinking their pale and punctual tea. Theon was assailed, again, by a curious, vindictive fancy that sometimes beset him, thinking of their separate lives and what they had become; a fancy to take and r****h Hermione, to feel her silly pink mouth fall open on the shape of an O under his hard kiss; stifling with that the cry she would presently make as he hurt her, de flowered her, made her bleed inside her lifted petticoats, so carefully laundered by aunt Galadriel's successive maids. One day, it should happen. One day... he'd work on it in his mind, fit it to suit his own eventual purpose for Baron; no reason for it otherwise.

Later, much later, he was to have leisure to reflect that if Hermione had in fact come up the hill to him that day, and he'd done as he said, not ridden over to town on Peter's horse to see Livia Millarch by chance that first time, their lives, the lives of all three of them-Hermione, Livia, himself-might perhaps have been different. But, again, perhaps not.

Theon was unable to ride Peter Melrose's gelding until after the return from Man; the beast had an inflamed foot, which did not settle to shoeing for two or three days. In the end Theon saddled him and, having changed his own clothes, rode off. It was by then late on Saturday, and he knew he would not return till after the Sabbath; trouble waited for those who made journeys on that day, except to and from a church. No doubt Peter would give him a meal.

Theon shrugged; he would, he thought, lie up in a hay rick meantime. It was already growing dark as he rode; the clip-clop of the great beast's iron hooves struck sparks from the road, lying pale and narrow in the moonlight. He had by now left the rough places behind, and had come to the way the mail-coach passed; he himself felt, again, like a gentleman, seated up here on Peter's fine bay. He spurred it on, seeing, as mile followed mile, the fire Aaron had made come out from below the flying, obedient hooves; old frail-seeming Aaron at his forge, wrestling durability and strength from bright-red iron, then stopping it to signal to the incoming ships Theon smiled 

 They'd got the cargo back safe enough, and stowed, and some delivered; he hadn't been idle these two days. Now, in Uncle Philip's cast-off coat of black velvet with frogging, and his hat, he himself might be Doon of Baron, riding the roads. The laird himself, casting a long shadow athwart the unending greystone dykes, passing them swiftly as night changed to dawn. Theon came on the town's spires pricking up into the sunrise before he remembered; damn, he'd have to attend church service, it was too late to hide. Already, parties of men and women were emerging in their best clothes, carrying packs of food to eat between the morn ing and afternoon sermons. He dismounted, begged a bowl of milk for himself, and a drink for the bay, from a dairymaid at a nearby farm, and presently rode on. The morning was by now clear and cool; Uncle Philip's velvet coat-sleeve had lost its glamour with the night, and looked rubbed and

shabby. He had drawn up the bay horse at last by the church gate, and was about to dismount, hoping perhaps to meet the Mel rose carriage as it came in with the rest; but had not yet done so, and a procession along the street gave him pause.

It was a pitiful one; he realised it must come from Em mett's orphanage. The young girls who composed it were, some of them, mere children; they wore cloaks of hodden with plain hoods, and were scraggy and thin, as though the sum mer's day itself would not warm their bones. Theon had heard of Emmett's; the inmates were spoken of with pity, for they were waifs who were taken in and trained, these days, in laundry and domestic service, from the payment of which, later, the authorities were recompensed for their keep. It was like a lifetime's s*****y; the governor, in his beaver hat, and his cold-eyed wife in her pelisse, walked ahead of the sad little procession as if ashamed to own it; behind again was a subordinate dragon, keeping the girls in order.

Theon sat his horse and watched, his own arrogance for the time forgotten; nevertheless, at the back of his mind, was the certainty that these poor young women would think him some grand, important personage, perhaps a relation of Sir Sandor Melrose. On the whole, they gave no sign of any such assumption; keeping their bleared eyes meekly on the path as they went into church, scuffing their patched footgear on the cobbles. Only one young woman was different. She raised her eyes, which were direct, grey and stormy beneath straight black brows. Her hair also was black as a crow's wing beneath her hood. She might have been about sixteen. Her gaze-it was arresting, yet cool and impersonal-met Theon's and held it. He would remember her face, with its broad cheekbones and full soft mouth; she showed none of the ill health of the other underfed young women. There was a difference about her, which at first he could not pin down or name; she was different from any girl he had ever seen any where. That hair, smooth and shining and black! When it was let down it would reach, he dared say, below her knees; he'd like to touch hair like that, to play with it. There were

other things he would like to do. The dragon's elbow thrust; they had been staring at one another too openly. "Livia!" a voice called. "Keep in the line and mind your ways." Mind her ways, eh? Livia, the wife of Augustus. The line

moved on. The twist of her young body under the shoddy

cloak as she rejoined the rest had showed Theon another

thing to remember; she was pregnant. A wanton? There could be small opportunity there..