The Favoured Child

I never lied to my mama.

I had hoped I never would lie to my mama.

I had hoped there would never be a single thing I could not tell her.

‘I’ve heard he left when he was quite young,’ I said. ‘The reason that he is so popular is that he used to send money back to people in the village during the bad years. Prize money,’ I said, improvising wildly. ‘From when he was at sea.’

Richard looked at me, his face impassive. He knew from my paleness, and from the way the tablecloth twitched before me as I pleated and twisted it under the cover of the table, that I was lying. And lying not at all well. And he knew I was lying to protect Mr Megson. Mr Megson – whom Richard had named as his enemy.

‘How very creditable,’ said Mama lightly. She took her shawl from the back of her chair and draped it around her shoulders.

‘Yes, and most unlikely,’ Uncle John said.

I had risen, and I whirled around to face him, my face suddenly white. ‘What do you mean?’ I demanded, and I knew my eyes were blazing.

‘My dear Julia,’ Uncle John said in faint surprise, ‘I mean only that I suspect that it is a respectable version of the man’s life history. I should imagine that an early apprenticeship with smugglers would be more like it. And the favours he could do Acre as a local smuggler would certainly be worth remembering.’ He smiled at my scared face. ‘No need to look so shocked,’ he said gently. ‘It makes little odds. Smuggling will always take place while we have absurd excise laws, and if he can command a gang of smugglers, he can certainly organize a ploughing team, I should think!’

‘Oh!’ I said. ‘I was only repeating what I heard in the village. But if he was a smuggler and now he has stopped smuggling, there could be nothing against him, could there?’

Uncle John held the door open for Mama and me. ‘I don’t think the law gives much credit to people who retire from a life of crime to a life of comfort,’ he said with a smile. ‘But there is obviously no one who would betray him in Acre. And I do not hold it against him. What I will do is have a quiet word with Lord Havering and one or two other Justices of the Peace locally, and see if there is anyone of Mr Megson’s description wanted. I don’t mind having a retired smuggler on my land, but I would object to an ex-privateer or a retired highwayman.’

‘Good gracious, yes!’ said Mama, settling herself in her chair in the parlour. ‘Why can Acre never be normal! Surely John, you could have found a manager who was not a criminal? Even if he is a retired one?’

‘A poacher turned gamekeeper is the best man to guard the game,’ Uncle John quoted with a smile. ‘Acre has always been an eccentric sort of village, my dear. I fear it will continue that way. And when it is set to rights, it may be that some of its finer sons come home again. There was an exile back today, wasn’t there, Julia? The man who had come all the way from Petersfield for the dinner.’

The guilty look on my face was as clear as a bell to Richard. I knew it as soon as our eyes met. But I was sitting at Mama’s feet at the fireside and I could not hide my face.

‘Who from Petersfield?’ he asked, seeming to care very little.

‘I don’t recall the name,’ Uncle John said. But then he remembered. ‘Tayler, Dan Tayler, was it not, Julia?’

‘Yes,’ I said, monosyllabic, my eyes on the fire.

‘Who is he?’ Richard asked blankly.

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