The Sleeping Sword by Brenda Jagger

indeed the life of a woman living apart from her husband was both sad and strange, for although she was deprived—albeit at her own choosing—of his status and his protection, she was still as subject by law to his control as if she had never set foot outside the matrimonial front door. Mrs. Barforth may well have retired to her family estate but in fact that estate, which had come to her in her grandfather’s will, did not really belong to her at all but to her husband. Separated or not separated, she remained his wife and as such could own no property apart from him. What she possessed he possessed. What he possessed was his absolutely. He could claim Galton as his own, could sell it or knock it down as he chose, without her consent, and there was no authority to which she could realistically complain. A married woman, we all knew, assumed her husband’s name and was absorbed into his identity. A separated woman appeared to have no identity at all, and no protection, being obliged to depend financially, legally and every other way on the whim of the man who was still her legal guardian. If Mrs. Barforth had tried to run away, she had not gone very far, her bolt for freedom—if such it had been—ending in a fresh captivity which, however irksome it might or might not be to herself, was the cause of much honest indignation to her daughter.
    â€˜They should be together or they should be separate—one thing or the other,’ was Venetia’s deeply held opinion. ‘And she should stand up to him and tell him so, for he is not so terrible and she is brave enough in other ways. I would tell him …’
    Her mother, in fact, despite her outer layer of cheerfulness, had reminded Venetia of nothing so much as a woodland creature tethered in its natural habitat on a very long chain which, while permitting an illusion of freedom, could be drawn tight at any moment to suit the purposes of its master. And although she knew her father’s hand was on that chain, she believed the cause of it—at least partly—to be Gervase. Left to her own devices, her mother—Venetia was sure of it—would have evaded all restraint long ago and flown away. But she remained; and since daughters, in the Clevedon tradition, had never counted for much, the reason for her enforced docility could only be her son.
    â€˜Ah yes,’ he said, outwardly very languid now. ‘Do blame me—do follow the fashion.’
    â€˜So I will, because she is sitting on that land guarding it for you—you know she is.’
    â€˜And rightly so, since I am the last of the Clevedons.’
    â€˜And do you know that every time father tells her to do something she does it, however much she loathes it, because she’s afraid he’d sell the estate if she disobeyed him?’
    â€˜Yes, Venetia. I am a little older than you, if you remember, and none of this is news to me. But she cares about the land, Venetia—she wants to be there.’
    â€˜Exactly. But do you?’
    â€˜I beg your pardon?’
    â€˜You know what I mean. She wants the land—yes, more than anything—but she doesn’t see the estate as hers. It was her grandfather’s and her father’s; it was going to be her brother’s. And when he was killed she started to think of it as yours. But I don’t know, Gervase—really I don’t. You used to run off to Galton when we were children, and she’d keep you there when you should have been at school, until father came to drag you back. And now sometimes you can’t bear to keep away—you run off there now when you should be at the mills—but there are times when mother hardly sees you at all. And when she does you’re not always sweet.’
    He paused, smiled, moved one very weary hand towards the coffee-pot and smiled again, evidently deciding that, since neither of us showed signs of coming to his assistance, the effort of