It was unprecedented for her to interrupt Edmund while he was hard at work. So, as soon as he spotted her, he switched off the machine, pulled off the earmuffs he was wearing for hearing
protection, and jumped down to meet her as she came stumping towards him. The expression on her face told him at once that it was serious: he strode towards her, enfolding her in his arms, and
hugged her so tightly that the buttons on the flap pockets of his waxed Barbour jacket dug into her.
Brianna Jade burst into tears, the cold air making them tingle on her cheeks as she sobbed against his shoulder. Eventually she wiped them away with the handkerchief Edmund gravely handed her
and managed to tell him the entire story in a stuttering flow of words, interrupted by frequent pauses to blow her nose and blot the tears away. It all came out, every single detail about the Pork
Queen title, the details of what was in the photographs that Barb possessed.
‘I’m not at all ashamed of it!’ she said passionately, looking directly into his clear grey eyes. ‘I was
proud
to win that title – it’s pretty much
the only one I ever
did
win.’
She couldn’t help a snuffle of amusement at those words.
‘You know, it’s my past, and I worked real –
really
hard to win that pageant,’ she continued. ‘I wouldn’t care at all if the photos were all over the
papers.’
‘Nor would I,’ Edmund assured her with a vigorous shake of the head. ‘No one who cares about you would give a damn, darling. You might get some good-natured teasing around here
when we go out to dinner, but if you take it in the spirit that it’s meant, it’ll fade pretty quickly. I mean, we’ve all got embarrassing photographs of ourselves when we’re
young, haven’t we? And if this so-called
friend
of yours takes money for selling photos of you – well, that’s the worst form imaginable. People will positively rally
round you in support, I promise.’
She’d known that Edmund would take this position, but the relief was still huge. Her body relaxed in his arms, and she hugged him back fiercely.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I was
sure
that’s what you’d say.’
‘But you weren’t,’ he said, frowning in concern. ‘Or you’d never have given this awful woman a penny.’
‘It’s Mom!’ Brianna Jade explained, her voice rising into a wail. ‘She’s loving her big social life, you know? And those people might not be as cool with this as
you and people in Rutland are! I heard Minty and Sophie used to call Princess Chloe “Dog Rose” when she was Prince Hugo’s girlfriend, before they got married, because her
surname’s Rose, and they were calling her a social climber, you know? Think what Minty and her group could do with all the Pork Queen stuff!’
‘“Friends” like that aren’t worth having,’ Edmund said with great contempt.
‘But this matters to Mom – she loves all the society side of things, and she’d hate to know people were sniggering at her and me,’ Brianna Jade said fervently, trying to
make Edmund understand.
‘You know, the whole Eurotrash world is full of social climbers,’ he said gently. ‘I can’t imagine this making much difference to them. And your mother’s best
friend is Lady Margaret, whose pedigree is absolutely impeccable. All Lady M would do on seeing photographs of you with a Pork Queen sash on is laugh her head off and then forget all about
it.’
Brianna Jade’s pretty forehead was corrugated with worry now.
‘I want to protect Mom,’ she explained. ‘Don’t you see? She’s protected me all my life, looked after me, kept me safe, worked her ass off to make money for us,
married Ken so we’d never have to worry about that again. Now
I
want to take care of
her.
’
‘So you’re going to pay blackmail to this awful woman for the rest of your life?’
Centuries of aristocratic breeding showed in the Earl of Respers’ voice and demeanour as he looked down his long nose at the mere thought of allowing oneself to be blackmailed. Like the
Duke of Wellington when the famous courtesan Harriette Wilson threatened to name and shame him in her memoirs, Edmund’s response would instinctively be the same: ‘publish and be
damned’. It was near impossible for him to imagine a situation where he would pay someone even once to keep silent about a secret of his, let alone for years and years.
‘I don’t
know
,’ Brianna Jade wailed feebly. ‘I need time to think about it.’
‘And in the meantime, Brianna, what happens?’ Edmund asked inexorably. ‘She can’t stay at the Hall with us. There’s simply no way in the world that I’m
extending my hospitality to some piece of moral refuse! She can’t sleep under my roof – it’s utterly impossible.’
‘Not even one night?’ Brianna Jade said in horror.
‘No! Absolutely not! Brianna, you don’t know what you’re asking. You give this woman an inch and she’ll take a mile. You have to put your foot down now, and letting her
stay when she’s turned up on our doorstep like this is completely the wrong thing to do,’ Edmund said with extreme seriousness. ‘I understand that you’re trying to protect
Tamra, but this is not the way to do it. Do please listen to me.’
Brianna Jade felt that she was being pulled in so many directions at once that she could barely breathe. She knew that Edmund was quite right: Barb shouldn’t be allowed to stay at the
Hall, should never even have been let inside. Once Mrs Hurley had told her who her visitor was, Brianna Jade should have got up immediately, marched to the front door and told Barb to get out and
stay out.
That’s what Mom would have done, no question,
she reflected sadly.
But I’m not Mom. I wish I was as tough as she is – she’s so good at knowing the right
thing to do, and she’s always brave enough to do it, too. I just blunder along, never taking the initiative, and now that means I’m totally stuck.
‘Shall I come back to the Hall now and we’ll throw her out together?’ Edmund asked. ‘Screw your courage to the sticking point, darling!’
Brianna Jade didn’t recognize the Shakespeare reference, but she knew she wasn’t ready for the kind of terrible screeching throwdown with Barb which the announcement that she was no
longer welcome at Stanclere Hall would inevitably provoke. She stared mutely at Edmund, silently begging for some reprieve, an agreement that Barb could stay for a night or two and postpone not
only the awful confrontation, but the equally inevitable splash of the Pork Queen revelation all over whichever paper or magazine Barb chose as the buyer of her story.
But Edmund didn’t budge. Of course, he was right: how could she imagine eating meals with Barb, for instance? How could they be under the same roof and not exchange a word? But then, if
they did speak, what could they say to each other?
What kind of Countess of Respers will I make if I can’t handle a crisis properly?
she thought in panic.
Look at me, I’m going to pieces! How am I ever going to handle
running the house and the estate and dealing with stuff that comes up when Edmund isn’t around?
‘I’m not ready yet,’ she managed. ‘I think I need to go for a walk.’
Edmund nodded slowly, more in acknowledgement of his fiancée’s upset state than in agreement that her decision not to confront her blackmailer was the right one.
‘Come back and find me when you’re ready,’ he said quietly. ‘I won’t go back to the Hall until we’re together. We should deal with this as a couple, Brianna,
don’t you think? I’ll be by your side when you tell her she needs to leave. She needs to see that I’m backing you up, that I don’t care a jot about whatever threats she
might make.’
Edmund was the perfect fiancé, which was wonderful: the trouble was that she wasn’t good enough for him. She wasn’t up to the pressure of being the Countess of Respers. She
had been skating along, letting her mother arrange everything; she didn’t have one useful thing to do in the Hall, and she knew it. The only place she had ever felt truly at home was where
her footsteps took her as she turned away from Edmund and plodded across the rutted field, over the stile and onto the dirt road that looped around the estate, down a path that led off it, knowing
exactly where she was going by instinct, even though she had never taken that precise route before.
She was headed to the piggeries.
And watching the slim figure of his fiancée move across the newly ploughed field, not towards Stanclere Hall but away from it, avoiding Barb Norkus and the confrontation that awaited her,
Edmund slipped his phone out of his pocket and dialled Tamra’s number.
It had been months since Brianna Jade had visited the pigpens, and yearning and anticipation rose in her as she approached them. She could hear the familiar grunting noises,
start to smell the warm, ripe scent of the pigs, which, to Brianna Jade, was wonderfully familiar. Memories of home, happiness, security instantly flooded back: running barefoot in the dusty earth
of the Lutzes’ farm, helping to feed the pigs and the chickens, long sunny Illinois summers with the scent of fresh hay and blue skies above. Even though today was a chilly February day with
a flat grey lid to the world, the cloud cover so low that it seemed as if you could almost reach up and touch it, the scents and sounds of the pigs still lifted her spirits, and as she rounded the
turn in the path, her heart raced even faster at the sight of Abel’s huge figure leaning on the rail of the sty, forearms propped on it, his shoulders hunched as he stared disconsolately down
at the Empress of Stanclere.
It didn’t occur to her to turn back while she still could, while Abel hadn’t noticed her approach. Her need for comfort was too extreme, the company of both the pigs and Abel exactly
the solace she needed. She wasn’t just escaping from the crisis at the Hall, from Barb’s unwelcome presence; she was heading towards the dead centre of the place where she felt most
relaxed, most wanted and needed in the world. Putting that into words would have scared her to pieces, so she instinctively shied away from it, telling herself that she’d just stay for a few
minutes, catch up with Abel and the Empress and then go back to the Hall and face the music . . .
The thought of having to confront Barb, even with Edmund backing her up, made her walk even faster, almost breaking into a run, as much as she could manage in her wellington boots. Hearing the
squelch of her rubber soles in the mud, Abel looked up, his expression changing from hangdog to joyous in a flash as he caught sight of her; his eyes lit up, he stood up straight, automatically
reaching a hand up to push his thatch of hair out of his face. He was dressed in his denim dungarees, a big cable-knit sweater underneath them to ward off the February chill, the legs tucked into a
pair of rubber boots so gigantic that they would have made almost every other man apart from a professional wrestler look as if he was wearing waders.
‘Brianna!’ he exclaimed unguardedly. ‘Oh, it’s nice to see you! Me and the pigs’ve really missed you.’
‘I’ve missed you all too!’
In her eagerness to reach his side, she skidded in the mud, nearly slipped and fell, flailed her arms in the air for balance, and only just managed to catch a rail of the pen in time to steady
herself. They should have been laughing about it; the near-pratfall was potentially hugely comic, the yelps Brianna Jade made as she slid and thrashed around, the dive for the rail, the splashes of
mud her boots kicked up, the way she grabbed and held on grimly as her legs threatened to slip from under her, should have had them both collapsing in fits as soon as she was stable.
But neither of them laughed, not at all. Brianna Jade, gripping onto the rail, getting herself straight, gazed up at Abel with an utterly serious expression in her brown eyes that mirrored
exactly the way he was gazing at her; he hadn’t reached out to help, even though, huge as he was, he could easily have extended a long arm to steady her. The Empress, a bulky pale mass
beneath the rail, looked optimistically at the new arrival, recognizing Brianna Jade and hoping for an extra treat, or at least a nice scratch on the back. But after a few moments her head dropped
again and, disappointed but resigned, she returned to working her way through the brimming contents of her trough.
‘Were you angry with me?’ Abel asked simply.
‘What do you mean?’ Brianna Jade looked puzzled. ‘Why would I be angry with you?’
‘You stopped coming round,’ he said. ‘To visit us. Me and the pigs. I thought you were angry with me – because of the cider. I didn’t mean to get you tipsy. Me and
Gran were so sorry that happened. We didn’t think anything of it, but then you never came back. I thought maybe I should come up to the Hall to see you, but Gran said to leave well
alone.’
‘Someone saw us,’ Brianna Jade blurted out. ‘When you carried me back. She was really snarky about it, and I thought I maybe shouldn’t come for a while. And then it went
on for longer than I meant, and I felt so weird about it . . . I just feel so confused about everything, and I didn’t know how to handle it – but that’s my problem.’
She started to cry again.
‘That’s
it
,’ she said hopelessly. ‘I don’t know how to handle things. I’m not up to this. I can’t deal with stuff like Mom can, and I
don’t think I’ll ever be able to . . .’
Her shoulders slumped in depression and she leaned on the rail, her forehead resting on her hands, tears dripping down her fingers. Her sobs grew louder and louder, her back heaving, as she
cried out her sense of failure; she couldn’t cope with Barb, had fled from Stanclere Hall rather than confront her, and she had come here in a pathetic search for comfort from the pigs and
the pigman she had abandoned months ago.
When Edmund had hugged her a short while ago, it had felt good, reassuring, a safe place to let out her tears. However, when Abel awkwardly placed a huge hand on her head, stroking her hair as
if she were an animal whose pain he was trying to ease, Brianna Jade, to her surprise, did not feel reassured at all. Instead, it was as if he had touched a pressure point, like the Shiatsu
massages she had had with her mother sometimes; when the massage therapist accessed, even lightly, a point of great sensitivity, it could make you nearly buck off the table with the shock, like
pressing deeply on a bruise.