Part One
1899
If any couple danced two consecutive waltzes
together every chaperone in the room would cock
her ears, wag her head and whisper excitedly to right
and left, for what could such a daring procedure
possibly spell if not that stirring word Betrothal?
Anita Leslie, Edwardians in Love

ONE

‘I’ll race you to Hey Tor,’ said Natalie, pushing down her bowler hat and steadying her grey mare.
‘The ground is too uneven,’ said Millie. ‘We . . . I . . . might fall.’
‘We’ll stay on the grass, Millie.’
The day was bright and the sky cloudless, but a brisk wind rattled the branches of the oaks and hazels that stood behind them.
‘But sometimes the grass hides the granite,’ said Millie. ‘We might not see it until it’s too late.’
Natalie leaned forward and ruffled her mare’s mane. ‘Artemis knows the moor,’ she said. ‘And so does Jennie.’
She straightened up and began to undo the buttons on her skirt. ‘And if we take off our safety skirts we’ll fall clear. If we fall.’
Millie’s cheeks grew almost as red as the Devon earth, but Natalie frowned at her for she was wearing the riding habit she always wore, not a new safety skirt. ‘I thought you’d been fitted for one,’ she said. ‘I thought we agreed—’
‘Mama thinks this habit perfectly good enough,’ said Millie. ‘And besides, I do not wear breeches underneath.’
Natalie shifted awkwardly in her saddle. She turned from Millie and stared out across the rising moorland towards the stony folds of Hey Tor. Patches and paths of short grass grew between tussocks of tall sedge, and the still-brown heather clung to spurs of granite, as if it felt safer there. The fluting call of a skylark filled the air above her, but Natalie did not look up. Instead she stared down at her dark blue Melton safety skirt and felt it inelegant, despite its fashionable cut; felt her new bowler hat vulgar; felt herself diminished beside Lady Millicent Bridewell.

Millie’s saddle creaked and Natalie turned to see her stretching out her hand. ‘A gentle canter,’ she said. ‘Or perhaps just a walk.’ But Natalie turned away. Millie had said she would be fitted for a new safety skirt and she had not. It should not matter but, by obeying her mother, she had dismissed Natalie. Impulsively, Natalie urged Artemis away and when she was galloping across the moor towards Hey Tor she shouted out her frustration. The Bridewells had never understood her but she would not care. She would be herself; she would find her own way in the world. She would defy the Bridewells and their restrictive ways. And she would wear breeches just as often as she wished.

The speed of the ride echoed Natalie’s defiance. She was at one with her mare and Artemis did not stumble, neither did Natalie fall as the ground rushed away beneath them. If she could have found a way to stand in the stirrup without unbalancing Artemis she would have, just as she stood in two stirrups when she rode alone, astride her mare. When at last they pulled up beneath Hey Tor, Natalie turned to look back towards Bridewell Wood. Both she and Artemis were out of breath so they stood still, gathering themselves under the bright sun, warm despite the cold wind, and then Natalie saw Millie and her mare, half a mile away. They were close to the edge of the wood and the way Millie rode could not have been more different from the way Natalie had just ridden. Even at this distance it was clear Millie rode sedately, her carriage upright and correct.

As Natalie watched them, her defiance began to give way. She had hoped Millie would change her mind and follow her and now she willed her to turn, to raise her hand, to acknowledge her presence. But she did not. When Millie and her bay disappeared into the wood Natalie tried to banish her disappointment. She had imagined galloping across the moor beside Millie. She had pictured them sitting beneath Hey Tor while their mares grazed. She had heard their laughter and imagined what they might talk about: perhaps the dinner at her father’s house the night before and the tedious, mundane nature of the
conversation.

For as long as she could remember Natalie had imagined encounters and hoped they would translate into real ones. The only person who had ever encouraged her to do so had been her mother and she was no longer alive. Only her mother had speculated about the things people might really be thinking, the meanings that were hidden beneath the things they actually said. Only her mother encouraged her to treat the natural world as if it were capable of responding. Only she told Natalie that despite the restrictions the world imposed upon women, she could do or be anything in her imagination. But Natalie was not quite twelve years old when her mother died and she had never met another who understood her so well. In those twelve years there had only been one subject on which her parents disagreed: her father wanted his daughter to adopt the ways of their neighbours, the Bridewells; her mother said she should discover her true nature and had no need of
adopting the ways of anyone, no matter who they were.

On the day Lady Bridewell told Sir Thomas Edwardes she had hired a governess for her children, Natalie overheard her mother say to her father, ‘If you send Natalie to be schooled at Waverton Court, Thomas, then please behave as if you were Lady Bridewell’s equal. Do not bow so low when she calls and do not agree with her every suggestion. For if you continue to do so, you will become her plaything.’
Even now Natalie did not know that her father had paid Miss Reedle’s wages entirely himself, but his loneliness in his widowhood was so obviously lightened by their association with the Bridewells that she rarely had the heart to refuse to accompany him to Waverton Court. And so it was that the Bridewells were the only family Natalie really
knew, and the only family in whose company she struggled to hold on to her true self.

She rode sedately away from Hey Tor, just as Millie had ridden into Bridewell Wood, her cheeks flushed from the gallop but her expression sober, for she knew if she were not to upset her father unduly she must behave more like Millie and less like herself. By the time she caught up with Millie, on the far side of Bridewell Wood and within sight of the red-tiled roof of Waverton Court, she said, ‘I did not mean to cause you embarrassment with my talk of breeches, Millie. And I should not have galloped off without you.’
‘We shall forget about it from this moment,’ said Millie and she took Natalie’s outstretched hand. But when they drank tea in the drawing room with Millie’s sister, Gussie,
and the Bridewell sisters informed Natalie of their imminent departure for London, for the Season, Natalie could not help envying them their ease and certain knowledge of their place in the world. She felt as unlike them as the common frog who spends her whole life, except for her brief breeding season, alone.
‘We shall find ourselves husbands next year, Millie,’ said Gussie, although her lisp reduced husbands to timid, insubstantial creatures, not the dashing young men Natalie imagined for herself. Gussie looked sideways at Natalie without moving her head: it had a belittling effect. ‘All the eligible young men in the land will be in London, will they not, Millie? We shall have the pick of them.’
‘I think we shall find many young women in London too, Gussie. And they, and their chaperones, will be gathered with the same intention. We must not assume we shall have the pick, as you call it.’
‘I think you shall not have a London Season, shall you, Natalie?’ said Gussie, ignoring her sister.
‘Gussie,’ said Millie, ‘don’t be unkind.’
‘It is not unkind,’ said Gussie. ‘It’s a fact. No one in Natalie’s family has been presented at Court, so she shall not have a Season.’

Even though Natalie had little desire for a Season, Gussie’s words hurt. The way young men and women were matched according to bloodline and land acreage was quite
without feeling, but to be prohibited from finding out what the balls and the dinners were like, just because she was not high-born, was painful.
‘We are higher born than you, Natalie,’ Gussie had said once, her blonde curls bobbing over her seventh birthday cake.
‘You should never say such things,’ said Millie.
‘But it’s true,’ Gussie retorted, with a determined nod. ‘And I know you both think so too.’ She nodded at her sister and at her brother. She did not look at Natalie.
‘Nevertheless it is very ill-mannered,’ said her brother. But his nevertheless had given him away too.
Gussie breathed out sharply through her nose, a habit acquired from her mother, when Natalie said, ‘Gussie is right. I shall not have a Season.’
Gussie looked directly at her and Natalie smiled sweetly.
‘But how shall you find a husband?’ said Millie.
‘Gentlemen also exist in Devon,’ said Natalie. ‘I shall fall in love with a farmer. We shall have ten children and breed Devon Rubies.’
‘You are more likely to attract a man who will give you rubies,’ said Millie. ‘You are by far the prettiest of us and you . . . stand out, for you are different. In the autumn we shall arrange a ball in your honour and you shall dance with all the landowners in Devon. We shall see you installed in South Devon Manor, perhaps, within the year.’

Neither Millie nor Gussie would contemplate marrying the owner of South Devon Manor, and standing out was not approved of in a young woman, at least not in the Bridewell
world. But Natalie’s pain at Gussie’s dismissal quickly transmuted into relief for, when the Bridewells departed for London, she would be free to live without their constant
disdain and, on her way home, she imagined that life, a life in which she and her father no longer called at Waverton Court and she found that, apart from missing Millie a little,
she was glad to be free to live without her father’s desire for her to become someone she was not. She would ask her Aunt Goodwin to introduce her to the farming and professional families her father had signally failed to invite to Hey Tor House, families among whom there must be at least one gentleman who would, as her mother had once said, ‘show himself for an honest man and one who will never be dull, for you will need a man with a lively imagination if you are to live with him happily. And if he has no imagination of his own, then he must be a man who will listen to your spirited imaginings and value them as if they were his own.’
Aunt Goodwin, her mother’s sister, would be her protecting angel and, once married, Natalie would bring up her children as her mother had brought her up. They would
never know the pain of trying to squeeze themselves into a world where they felt unwelcome.

When Natalie arrived back at Hey Tor House her father asked for news of the Bridewells, as he always did, and she said, ‘They go to London in April, Papa, for the Season.’
She kissed him lightly on the cheek. ‘But even you cannot arrange for me to go with them, for we do not belong at Court.’
‘What nonsense you talk,’ said Sir Thomas. ‘It was at St James’s that I received my knighthood.’
‘No woman in our family has ever been presented to the Queen, so I cannot be presented.’ She kissed him again and said, ‘Don’t look so unhappy, Papa, for I am glad. The kind of gentleman I shall marry will not be the kind who cares for a London Season. He will care for me because I am myself and your daughter, not because I come from a long line of aristocrats. And with Aunt Goodwin’s help, I shall find that gentleman close by.’